


Broken

by lilyconrad



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Blood and Gore, Bottom Anakin Skywalker, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, NSFW, Not A Happy Ending, Sex, Suicide, Top Obi-Wan Kenobi, Violence, obikin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:08:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9595076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyconrad/pseuds/lilyconrad
Summary: The Twins are unstoppable enforcers of the Emperor’s will, the sun and moon that hang in the black void of his rule. It is said they are not the same age and that under their hoods they do not look alike, but they fight as one entity, silent and terrible as an eclipse in a spring sky.





	1. Mission 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all, this is the fic that came from the prompt y'all requested I expand into a fic over on Tumblr. <3 Be warned it is going to be a dark, explicit, and at times violent story and there will not be a happy ending!

Through sheer luck, Jedi Padawan Rakan Vel had survived the slaughter at the Jedi Temple, the awful tide of troopers and blaster bolts that rolled through the ancient complex on the day the Empire rose. His shyness and habit of hanging back at the tail-end of groups had saved his life that day: as the soldiers had rushed through the padawan dorms, he had taken a minor wound in a sweep of fire that killed the friends he had been walking to practice with, their lifeless bodies tumbling down atop him.

He had had just enough fear and conscious thought left to play dead under the pile of corpses, the Force-blind troopers unable to sense him as they swarmed through halls freshly marred with black laser burns and craters from grenades. Their white-armored boots had clumped past him as he tried not to breathe in the charred scent of his best friend’s flesh and the rank smell of his own bladder letting go in terror when one of the troopers had come to a stop in front of him before finally jogging along at an impatient order from his squad leader.

Rakan’s master had arrived planetside and found him a day later, still there in the same spot, terrified and unable to bring himself to crawl out from under the stiffened bodies, unwilling to face what the world had become.

He remembered being pulled free, a warm robe being wrapped around him, and then a ghostly line of vague memories, all neatly framed by metal or plastisteel as he blankly stared out of ship windows. The skyline of the Senate district with the Temple still burning, space, hyperspace, space, over and over again in a blur of blue and black.

And then finally a new skyline, one of bare, jagged mountains against a pale pink sky as the ship had descended, the view so different from the vast glittering spires of Coruscant. Their new home, him and his Master. And eventually another master and her padawan. Two surviving pairs, a few remaining links lost and hopelessly adrift where once there had been a beautiful chain binding them and so many others as one in the Force.

Together the four Jedi had started rebuilding their lives, one piece at a time, their new purpose to fight the Imperial terror that had risen up in place of the Republic. Survivors of the Empire’s brutal new policies had found their way to them, and rebels from better-off systems that could not make themselves turn a blind eye to others’ suffering.

Their little group had not been organized. Not a threat. Not yet.

And now they never would be.

Rakan stood in the crude base’s hangar bay, one large enough for ten small ships but small enough for the padawan to see everything happening. The rebels shouting and screaming, blaster fire echoing wildly around.

This wasn’t like the Temple, the padawan noted in shock. All the blaster fire was coming from his people, a searing storm of bolts that should have easily stopped the two intruders currently marching through the bay behind twin lines of crimson plasma that twitched to deflect shot after shot back up into the ceiling or the bodies of the rebels trying to hold their ground.

The pair had rammed a small craft through the hangar bay doors and leapt out with red lightsabers bright against the swirl of their black robes, striking down the men nearest to them before the deafening roar of the impact had even finished echoing around the vast space.

Rakan watched, frozen in place, as the shadows silently cut their way through twenty more of his fellow rebels without pause, sweeping along in perfect, terrible synchronicity. Where one blocked, the other attacked. Where one fell back, drawing fire, the other would leap forward. They would fade at the same time into the darkness pooled around the ships and reappear in impossibly fast attacks from opposite directions, always moving forward, no mercy for those they met along the way.

To fight them was to die.

Rakan faintly, as if his thoughts were happening in a place far removed from his trembling body, recalled hearing of these two. They had been Jedi, the rumors said.

And unlike the shock troops at the Temple, whatever these monsters had been before this their sabers still meant Force-sensitives, which meant the ability to sense Rakan. He knew this, and still he couldn’t make himself turn to run back into the base.

Three men up ahead and to Rakan’s left leapt out of an open ship with a high-caliber portable cannon, shouting as they thrust the stand to the floor and swung it into position, but it was too late. The hooded attackers were already lifting their free hands and as one entity sweeping them in a vicious slash to send a large crate shrieking across the hangar floor.

It slammed against the side of the ship so hard the vessel rocked back and forth and a spray of blood exploded outward, the men’s last tortured cries as it crushed them barely audible above ricocheting laser fire and a scattering of fresh, panicked screams to retreat.

The screams were like the Temple, Rakan realized with that same fuzzy sense of distance. Those were the same.

 _Padawan!_ came a tense call through the Force. _Come back to the control room! Help me and Master Niem destroy our data stores._

_And then… are… are we leaving, Master?_

_No._ The Force trembled with frustration and anger, so unlike the endless calm he was used to from his dear Master. _The Empire has every other exit covered from the air._

 _The Twins are here, Master!_ he said, terrified and wishing he sounded braver. Like his best friend Letie had, calling out a warning to the troopers in the Temple hallway before a blaster shot had punched itself through her.

_I know. We will fight them. It is all we can do. Come, Padawan. Come stand with us._

One of the attackers looked up from across the way as another set of defenders fell to the crimson lightning bolt of his blade, his hood falling back to reveal glowing yellow eyes and a predator’s smile floating in the dark.

He had caught Rakan’s scent in the Force, and the scar on the right side of his face twitched as he gave him a crooked, obscene grin and lifted his boot over a still-twitching corpse to take a step toward him.

 _You’re next,_  that smile promised.

Rakan stumbled back in horror as the man drifted into a pool of overhead light on his way to him. He knew that face, even if it was disfigured by strange eyes and a horrible smirk, a face that was impossible for any Jedi padawan raised during the Clone Wars to forget no matter how long the man himself had been missing in action. They had all grown up on tales of his heroics, on envied encounters and glimpses of him when he was home at the Temple between missions.

Letting out an inarticulate cry of disbelief, Rakan fled back into the long hallways of the base, shouting through the Force at his master to run, to get away, tears stinging his eyes as he realized how hopeless escape would be.

The man followed with slow, relaxed strides, blade idly swinging at his side.

 

* * *

 

“Didn’t reports have this base at at least fifty rebels, Commander?” one of the newer soldiers muttered as the gun ship sailed down through the dusty atmosphere of this remote Outer Rim world, pointing out at the flare burning like a wound across the ruddy, empty sky. “That all-clear signal has to be a mistake. Right?”

Commander Appo grinned under his helmet, amused, as the ship clattered along. The adiik, as the clones called the natural humans brought into the Imperial army after Empire Day, had been a necessary evil after the deaths of so many brothers in the last surges of the Clone Wars. But as the private nickname suggested, they would always be little children to the brothers no matter how many battles they fought in. Natural humans were always so easily frightened and distracted from missions, lacking the discipline and martial faith every brother was born with. “This is your first assignment on detail with the Twins, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Commander. Both me and Arenn over there.”

“Expect clean up duty and nothing more. Maybe a few poor bastards still moving, but not for long.” Appo turned to face the rest of the squad, his voice clear and sharp through their helmet comms. “When we land spread out and look for the usual. Datapads, flimsiplasts, comm equipment or records. Anything that will lead us to more of these little nests. And for you two new additions to the Twins detail, two rules.” Lifting his gloved hand, he counted them off with raised fingers. “One: No one speaks to the Twins but me. Two: No one touches them at all for any reason, even if they’re injured. Especially if they’re injured.”

“Why is that, Commander?” the squad’s second adiik ventured, peering out through the open door as if he’d be able to somehow see them from this far up.

“They’ve been trained to follow my orders and my orders alone when on assignment in the field. If they’re injured I’ll order them to submit to our medics for treatment back on the ship.”

“You have to order them to do that, Commander?”

“Yes. Think of them as barely tamed nexu, gentlemen, and treat them accordingly. That way you’ll all live and I won’t have to fill out all the karking reports I always have to make when one of them kills you for touching the other.”

They rode down the rest of the way in relative silence, only the hiss of gritty air gusting through the ship as the two newbies carefully contemplated the inclusion of ‘always’ in Appo’s cold words of advice.

The final pass over their landing zone showed what Appo had promised, a silent and still landing pad leading into a hangar bay littered with bodies that stretched back into the darkness of the mountain. The Twins were waiting for them, their hoods up and tilted in the direction of the approaching gunship, motionless save the billowing of their ebony robes against the bone-white of the duracrete.

As the vessel crunched down on the far end of the landing pad, Appo hopped out and waved his men along into the base, arm coming down in a straight chop from above his head. The squad jogged past the hooded figures, splitting into two lines as they went around them. A few of the brothers made good-luck signs as they passed and the two adiik openly stared from the way their helmets swiveled, but the Twins did not move.

They remained still as statues, hooded and eyes hidden, as Appo approached them.

He personally hated dealing with them but it wouldn’t do to risk his own men seeing him ill at ease, and so he stood taller and strode toward them as if he couldn’t feel their cold, empty gazes on him. Passing through him as if he weren’t even there.

The one on the left was taller with a sensitive, pretty mouth always set in a faint frown. “Koh,” Appo nodded in greeting before glancing at the bearded, pale one on the right. “Sen.”

“Commander,” they both answered at the same time with the same quiet monotone.

“How many were there?”

“57 combatants,”  Koh responded after a moment, tilting his head and silently conferring with Sen from the way the older man’s hood shifted as he turned to look at him.

“Dead,” Sen finally added once their mental tallies apparently matched up.

“Yes. All dead.”

Appo folded his arms so he wouldn’t drum his fingers nervously along his leg. It was hard facing these two alone, even in the bright light of day. Somehow that made it worse than night missions, being able to clearly see the black-clad wraiths standing like the old gods of death suddenly risen in front of him. “Good. Any Jedi this time?”

“Four.” Koh reached into his robes and held out two lightsabers as Sen offered another pair from his.

Appo made a disgusted face, not wanting to touch the weapons for fear of somehow activating them, and waved his hand dismissively. The Twins turned their hands over with that same eerie synchronicity, as if one person were controlling two people, dropping the sabers to bounce and skitter away. They rolled off, glittering across the paving and already forgotten as the two men’s hands dropped back into the folds of their robes and they awaited their next command.

“Do you have any injuries?”

“No,” came the twin echo.

“Good. Sen and Koh, your mission is complete. You have served the Empire well today. The pilot will take you back to the ship while we clean up here. Return to your quarters and rest.”

They did not salute, only giving the faintest of nods to him before walking past him on either side toward the ship. Listening to the thud of their boots across the duracrete, Appo made himself stay facing the hangar bay, not allowing himself to turn around and watch them to make sure they got on board. He let out a relieved breath only when he heard the gunship’s engines spin up into take off and the vessel shove itself skyward and toward the Imperial destroyer orbiting far overhead.

Glancing back and around to reassure himself he was alone out on the platform, the Commander dragged his fingers across his arm in the same good-luck sign his brothers had made earlier and shook his head before striding into the base to supervise what was left of the mission.

 

* * *

 

Only when the last set of doors slid aside and the lights flickered on in the large set of rooms that was the Twins’ home did the two finally remove their hoods and shrug off their heavy robes, tossing them aside to land in piles of black on the floor for the cleaning droids to take care of later. Sen took a few more steps into their quarters, the doors barely closed behind them, when Koh’s tanned hand landed on his shoulder and gently turned him back around.

_Injured?_

Sen shook his head, auburn hair sparking gold highlights, as Koh ran his hands up and down Sen’s lithe chest and arms. Koh’s brow furrowed as his fingers slid across the same snug cut of the black combat suit that he also wore, looking for wounds.

 _Not injured_ , Sen reassured him, bringing up a hand to gently stroke Koh’s dark waves of hair out of his face. Neither of them liked to say that word aloud.

The thought was more like a flash of the concept, vague and glowing dully into a recognizable spark before fading out just as quickly.

Koh said nothing, kneeling to continue his inspection, hands falling to run along Sen’s thighs and legs. The only sound in the room was the gentle ticking of a chronometer Koh had put together months ago echoing from the workroom across from their bedroom, its steady and predictable beat soothing to both of them.

Sen’s hand lingered in the softness of Koh’s hair as Koh gave a deep sigh and stayed kneeling at his feet, arms wrapped around his hips and leaning into his thigh as he tried to work through the last of the lingering unease he always felt after missions. _Safe. You’re safe._

 _Yes. You are too,_ Sen answered, his own tension starting to drain away as he pulled Koh to his feet and took his turn gently touching and stroking Koh’s body, smoothing out the worst of the jagged spikes in the Force swirling around them both as Koh submitted willingly, lifting and lowering his arms, turning to let Sen see his back.

As his pale fingers ran along Koh’s broad shoulders, Koh turned his head. His fine profile silhouetted against the stars outside, he whispered a single word back to Sen. “Home.”

“Yes,” Sen murmured, sliding a hand up Koh’s back and around his throat, drawing him back against his chest as his grip tightened. “Home. Together.”

Koh closed his golden eyes and smiled peacefully at the pressure around his neck, turning in a slow grind of his body against Sen’s until they were facing each other, foreheads touching. Opening his eyes again he found another pair the same bright hue as his own so close he could see nothing else, the rich color filled with the same nervous energy and desire he felt thrumming through his own veins.

It was right to be like this, to be so in sync Koh had to close and open his metal hand on Sen’s chest to remind himself of which one he was-- _the one with the scar, the darker one--_ in the vast and bottomless tangle of their emotions and sensations.

 _Do you want…_ one of them asked, though neither could tell which. Images danced alongside the question: sweat and force, streaks of hot white across flesh.

 _Yes_ , came the silent, hungry reply, consent and anticipation given without care for which one began and which one answered. This would drive away the last, lingering tension from the day, they both knew, the last restless urges and bloodlust that always plagued them both after a mission. It always did.

Sen’s hand slipped away from Koh’s throat, down his chest, and lingered over Koh’s metal hand balled up in the fabric of his suit. The sensation of his fingers resting over the gloved machinery came to Koh in blunt senses of pressure, anchoring him to reality just enough to understand he was the one leaning in to kiss the other, his mouth hot and demanding against Sen’s.

Sen smiled, inviting Koh’s tongue in with the wet heat of his own, and then Koh was shoving him back once and then again across the room to land with a thud against the long windows there. Sen let Koh crash against him and grind hard against his hips as Koh rested his chin on Sen’s shoulder.

Koh’s breath fogged the cool glass of the window behind them, the pair enjoying for a little while the mix of pleasure and near-pain at Koh’s forcefulness before Sen jerked Koh back by the hair and gave him his own rough kisses, forcing the younger man to walk backward in awkward, unsure steps toward the center of the room.

Sen’s hand drifted to rub himself through the crotch of his combat suit as he dragged Koh along, the bulge there firm and growing, and Koh bit his lip as he realized what Sen was doing, his own hand reaching down to the hard length of himself straining against the fabric there.

It felt so good, they thought as one of them jerked the other’s suit open, as one sat down in a chair while the other knelt. Sen barely recognized the cold pressure of the floor under his knees and had the distant realization he was the one sucking and licking the firm weight in his mouth hard enough Koh’s back was arched in a lovely line, that Koh’s trembling fingers were the ones wrapped so tight in Sen’s hair beautiful pain sang through both of them.

And then after more gasps and moans and fumbling with sweet slickness they had switched, Sen in the plush seat and the milky white disc of the planet outside a strange halo around Koh’s head as Koh rode him as hard as he could, thighs apart as he straddled Sen’s lap and their breaths harsh gasps against the faint ticking of the chronometer in the silence of the apartment.

Koh’s hands were around Sen’s throat, the metal hand squeezing harder as it always did, and Sen brought one hand up from guiding Koh’s narrow hips to press the warm one tighter around his neck as well. “Yours,” he gasped breathlessly in response to Koh’s hissed “Mine,” that he repeated with every rough, desperate thrust up and down atop Sen.

Peace was something they made together in pain and ecstasy, its proof written in bloody scratches and bruises and sung in cries of sweet agony that never made it past the apartment’s carefully soundproofed walls. Sometimes, like tonight, it took several tries to find their balance again, to banish the last of their anxiety and bring the crashing waves of the Force around them back down to the smooth glass of midnight waves along a beach.

But when they finally did it was beautiful, dark and silent and perfect. There was nothing beyond Sen and Koh, beyond orders and battle and a vicious need for the other that burned so strongly there were times it almost felt like hatred.

There was nothing beyond this, and there never had been.

When they were finally finished for the night, sagging against each other in breathless release under the hot spray of the refresher’s large shower stall, they managed to stumble out, exhausted, to their bed. Damp hair plastered to their foreheads, Koh’s hand nestled along Sen’s jaw and lost in his beard, they fell asleep in a close, compact tangle of arms and legs, one of them barely remembering to pull the sheets up over them.

Neither noticed the datapad that had been left on the nightstand earlier in the afternoon by a helpful servant droid, the screen opened to a simple cover page adorned with the sharp precision of the Imperial emblem.

The square of text glowed dimly as the bedroom lights faded to black and left only a stunning vista of stars. They glittered through the long window behind the bed, crowning the two sleeping men with cold, empty beauty.

 **_Note:_ ** _Briefing scheduled for tomorrow LST. Hall 2-44 at 1400 LST._

 **_Vocal Key required for document access:_ ** _IA-01 Koh, IA-02 Sen._

 

**_Summary_ **

**_Mission:_ ** _N-034._

 **_Attention:_ ** _Review attached intel and timeline, attention to subsections 2 and 5._

_Memorize schematics 1a-3c and attached security codes._

**_Target:_ ** _Rebel element CT-7567 and associates._


	2. Brothers-in-Arms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all. This is a heads up that I will be adding content warning tags to this story as they appear, so please check those each chapter if you have topics you are sensitive to. Thank you!

The brothers did not dream, as a rule: not a single one Rex had ever met could share an amusing recollection of a dream where he found himself standing naked in the middle of a morning assembly or recount a nightmare about something vague and monstrous chasing him through the dark.

In the place of dreams many brothers had random memories rise up in the long, black stretch of sleep, recalled with such clarity any other sentient would call it a dream because the dreamer was unaware it was not real life while it was happening. Their makers were puzzled by the phenomenon but let it pass unaddressed, deciding in their documentation that since the clones could not dream for subconscious release of stress, their brains had instead forced memories into fulfilling that particular psychological role.

And that was how Rex found himself running through the thick clouds of mist and smoke of a bleak Outer Rim battlefield once again, shouting through his comm for anyone nearby to converge on his signal as he ran over what seemed like the same endless rocky, uneven patch of ground forever. Neatly blasting droids in the head as he came across them in the fog, bright blue halos flaring around them before they clattered to the ground, he switched his comm to the aerial command channel.

Somewhere overhead, though the gloom made it impossible to tell exactly where, ships were roaring past in the turmoil of clouds swirling by in the lower atmosphere. “Skyside, this is CT-7567, Captain Rex, calling in a five-klick LAS recon net from CC-2224’s last known location,” he hissed, jogging along. “Track any ship on a departure vector and engage with restraint. Disable and board. Even our own! Do you copy?”

“Captain Rex,” the puzzled answer came back in a whine of static. “Skyside here, confirming order to target our own ships if found within the search perimeters?”

“Affirmative. Do it!”

“Copy that, Captain. Beginning LAS recon net scan.”

This didn’t make any sense. Cody’s horrific message didn’t make any sense.

Cursing and shooting as he ran, Rex felt fear, real fear, creeping along his bones and suddenly found himself thinking of the old, immortal witch Mandalorians blamed for death itself. _Come and sit by my fire/Come and feed it your bones/The fire takes everything, little child/Come and see what you owe,_ the old children’s song went, and he shoved the melody out of his mind as he desperately tried to understand the bizarre holo that had woken him up out of hard-earned sleep.

Cody’s face, small and blue and anguished, clutching at his head with one hand as the other arm with the wrist comm on it trembled. “They did it. They took them and we had to help them and I did but I didn’t want to and you have to understand, Rex, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to! They were inside my head! Making me do it! And now they want to me to do this and I don’t want to but I have to andmaybeIshouldbecauseIhelpedthemtakethem!”

And then Cody had put his blaster to his own head and pulled the trigger, falling forward and his wrist comm flailing, sending everything out of focus until it apparently slammed into the ground and broke, cutting off the hazy blue field in a sharp hiss of static.

Rex refused to believe it. He refused to believe the panicked, broken man he’d just seen was the same brave commander and best friend that had set out at earlier that day at the head of a squad accompanied by Generals Kenobi and Skywalker. Rex had been coming back in for some long overdue rest as the three had been heading out for the front line, and nothing had seemed amiss as they’d passed each other with salutes and nods.

 _It’s a trick. It has to be!_ Rex told himself, panting as his visor overlay showed he was almost to Cody’s tracker in spite of the thick fog all around him.

His foot kicked something aside.

Jumping back, he looked down and realized he was staring at a body. Not Cody’s, but a brother, this one shaved bald and with a tattoo along his neck. The seared edges of a blaster hole still smoldered along the side of his head, and Rex’s heart stopped as he realized there were other motionless shapes scattered on the ground in the mist around him.

An entire squad.

All of them helmetless, with their blasters in hand and matching scorch marks at their temples. Cody was off to his left, face down in the dirt and as still as the rest.

“No,” Rex whispered, shaking his head. “No. No.”

Ripping off his helmet, unable to breathe, Rex sat down heavily on the ground and was still there, unmoving, when Commander Tano surged out of the fog, her green lightsaber catching in the swirls of mist like fire and the men he’d radioed right behind her.

“They’re all dead,” Rex managed to say, gesturing hopelessly around.

“Master?” Ahsoka called out, eyes wide with horror as she took in the awful sight scattered all around them. “Master?!” she repeated, running off into the mist.

“They’re not here,” Rex told the ground, clenching his gloved fists in his lap. “The generals are gone.”

Blackness came, falling like a comet, sweeping away Ahsoka’s panicked cries for Kenobi and Skywalker and the sight of Cody’s limp body sprawled in the dirt. Rex blinked, wondering why the foggy day had gone so dark, and then he was back in his bunk, heart tight and breaths coming short and fast as he awoke in the middle of the night.

“Brother?” someone asked from above him, and he sat up, clutching at his chest.

“Dream... bad dream...”

While their makers had written off the brothers’ odd recollection of memories during sleep as unimportant, the clones did not. They approached their dream-memories with the same reverence and belief others might give religious prophecies as they developed a blend of the Mandalorian culture they were taught and the new version they created, one filled with charms and luck and fortune in an attempt to offset the random cruelties of fate that were a soldier’s lot.

“What about?” the same voice asked again quietly, and Rex placed it as Fives.

“That day. The day we lost Cody and the generals,” he said as quietly as he could in between gasps.

There was silence, and then the creak of the bunk as Fives climbed down from overhead, a large shadow leaning down over him to put both hands on his shoulders. They were warm, and soothing. “Have you had this dream before?” he whispered, as concerned as Rex was.

“No. Never.”

“Should we move camp?”

“I… I don’t know.” Rex put his head in his hands, and then the door behind them swung open, startling them both. Fives turned to face it but left a hand on Rex’s shoulder, an anchor for Rex to focus on as he tried to calm himself.

“Is everything ok in here?” the silhouette of a young woman murmured, not turning on the lights so as not to bother the other handful of men sleeping in their bunks. “I could feel fear and anger coming from in here… it was so strong it woke me up.”

Rex studied her, how much taller Ahsoka was than in the memory he’d just been lost in, how much harder her voice sounded. Here, in the awful future of that memory he’d awoken from, she  had lived through not only the mysterious loss of her dear masters but the genocide of her entire Order and the endless running of guerrilla life.

Ahsoka was as tough as any clone, but looking at her now Rex felt a deep sadness that she had had to become that way. Telling her about the memory would do nothing to help her own sleep, so he shook his head and shrugged. “Nothing, _vod_. Just a nightmare.”

She crossed over to him and hugged him, not pushing him any further, and Fives wrapped his arms around them both, the three staying quiet and still in the dark as the other brothers in the room slept on and Rex’s heart slowed. When the fear from the dream had faded to a dull sense of unease he swallowed and pulled back to look at them. “We should pack up and leave,” he whispered, Fives nodding in agreement. “We’re due to move anyway.”

“We’ll start packing up tomorrow morning,” Ahsoka said quietly.

 

* * *

 

It was still early enough in the morning dawn was only a faint hint of grey on the horizon, this world’s twin sunrise still an hour away. Appo held his blaster rifle close to his chest and smiled to himself as he closed his eyes and took in the cold, sharp air blowing through the forest he crouched in with the three squads he’d brought with him, the gusts rustling the leaves all around them.

He enjoyed combat, something he hadn’t seen as much of since being assigned to the Twins, and he especially enjoyed missions that involved tracking down traitor-brothers.

And this one was the one that started it all. Everywhere reports of him surfaced, a few more brothers would go missing. Fine, upstanding men. Good soldiers who followed orders. They’d go missing from sorties or patrols and then show up again months later, fighting alongside him. Appo resisted the urge to turn his head and spit in disgust.

 _Captain karking Rex. It’s about time. Let’s see what you think of this little surprise, you worthless chakaaryc_ , he thought as he gave the hand signal and his men spread out, crawling forward to target the cave entrance the rebels had sheltered with a nest of boughs and branches to hide it from aerial surveillance.

Old schematics and information scouts had given them on this rusting sprawl of a complex that had once been a scientific research station said that there were three exits. Sen and Koh were waiting far out of sight at the other two for Appo’s signal, no doubt as silent and still as they always were.

The Twins had balked, as much as their impassive faces showed emotion, when the briefing had gotten to the part about them being split up, but all Appo had had to do was repeat the conditioning mantra he’d been given to use on them when they hesitated in even the slightest of ways.

_He rapped the table in front of him twice before he began, both sets of gold eyes darting up from the map to him like startled predators._

_“Sen and Koh, ‘the elder brother’ and ‘the younger brother’, the long and short swords worn by kings in ancient times on Korriban. Like all weapons, the long and short swords serve their master as their master wills. Weapons have no fear. Weapons have no mind. They exist only to serve.” It was always unnerving to watch the resistance fade from their eyes and the tension drain from their shoulders as he recited the programmed mantra several times until they were wordless ghosts where people should be, empty and blank and disconcerting._

_“We serve,” came the response after the third repetition, delivered in a perfect harmony of Coruscanti and Outer Rim accents as they bowed where they stood. “We serve our master.”_

_“And I am his voice,” Appo said to finish and seal the exchange, moving on to the rest of the briefing with a certain smug satisfaction the two were back in line._

Crouching in the brush, darkness and the fresh scent of the woods all around, Appo tapped his comm to reach the Twins’ frequency. Opening the channel, he muttered, “All squads in position. IA-01, IA-02, proceed inside and engage hostiles. Standard orders, no quarter given.”

They answered in simple taps of their comms and Appo shut off the channel and waited, counting off five minutes on his own before he waved the men in, jogging down the slope toward the cracked arch of the exit and the darkness that waited inside. _They’ll be so busy fighting off Sen and Koh they won’t even realize we’re here. We should be able to shoot them right in the back: no worse than traitors like them deserve._

 _I’d like to be the one to put a blaster to Rex’s head and pull the trigger myself_ , he thought as he waved the two _adiik_ in first ahead of the rest as point men to find any booby traps the traitors might have rigged. _I hope I get the chance before the Twins get to him._

 

* * *

 

Rex was standing in the middle of a projected star map, finger tracing along the bright lines of travel routes and in the middle of suggesting planets to Ahsoka, when Echo burst into the command center, out of breath. “Trouble up by the north exit.” They had learned early on in their war against the Empire to avoid comms whenever possible: they were so ubiquitous many Imperial ships wouldn’t bother stopping to check out a planet or moon if no comm activity was detected.

Tilting his head, Rex paused, the ghostly blue lights hanging around him blinking out as Ahsoka clicked the projector off and stood up from the chair she’d been in. “What kind of trouble?”

“Top floor dropped a rock down the pipe to sentry. Sentry ran to me: said he heard screaming coming from the pipe and…” Echo tried not to look at Ahsoka, staring hard into Rex’s eyes. “... a plasma whine. Like a lightsaber.”

Whirling, Rex slapped the only controls they’d made absolutely sure still worked in the ruins: the original fire alarm system. No lights came on beyond the permanent amber gloom of the emergency lights they lived in, but a piercing throb sounded, rattling through rusty speakers three cycles before it died away. There were fewer than thirty brothers here, but they would all know what that sound meant: _Base compromised. Escape and regroup at one of three safehouses elsewhere in the system. Wait five standard days for contact before moving on with the primary mission: train and assist rebel groups in the fight against the Empire._

It was not the brave charge into battle the brothers’ blood craved, even after their chips were rendered inert, but fading into the shadows when the Empire reared its ugly head was what had kept the majority of the group alive and able to help others after all this time.

Rex’s dream-memory of Cody came back to him, sharp and horrible, bodies everywhere in the mist, as Ahsoka stood to look back and forth between him and Echo with her fists curled. “I can handle the Force user.”

“No,” he spat back, thrusting a blaster rifle at Echo and stuffing grenades into the pockets of his fatigues before he picked up another rifle, slapping a fresh charge into it. “Echo, take Ahsoka and pick up Fives and Wolffe on your way out. Pick one of the safehouses and get there. Do not comm or tell me which one. We’ll meet up later.”

“I am not running away, Rex! You won’t last three seconds against a saber!” she hissed, even as she slung a rifle over her back and took the grenades he handed her.

“If it’s the Twins we keep hearing about, you won’t either, sir,” Echo told her, catching a charge Rex tossed to him and locking it into place in his rifle with a harsh snap. “You’re the only Jedi we know of that survived the Purge, sir. We have to keep you safe.”

She drew breath to argue and Rex leaned over, cupping his hand against the back of her neck, a gesture the brothers used to soothe each other. The pressure stirred subconscious memories of the headrests in the safe, warm liquid bassinets they spent the first months of their lives in, and he knew she would understand he meant the same comfort for her. Touching foreheads with her, he closed his eyes so she wouldn’t see his fear that this might be the last time they spoke. “Go, _vod._ I’ll distract them and then catch up later.”

A muffled rumble shook the room, all three of them looking up as the room’s old shelves rattled and squeaked, supplies tumbling off a low shelf behind them. “South exit booby traps,” Echo muttered angrily. “They’re trying to herd us toward the Force user.”

“Assume two of them and all main exits blocked,” Rex said, pulling away from Ahsoka and trying not to look at her. “Take the emergency tunnel out, the one we dug out. Bastards shouldn’t know about that one.”

“You are not going to fight them!” Ahsoka repeated as Echo slapped Rex on the back and drew his thumb down and across Rex’s cheek in a good luck sign. “We’ll go together!”

“There is no way they know you’re with us or that you’re even alive, Ahsoka. We need to keep it that way. Let them think I’m the big fish here.”

“This is stupid! You’re our leader!”

“We’re all free men, _vod_. We’re all the rebellion. What would your old masters have done?” He knew it was cruel to bring them up, but he needed her gone. Every second that went by was one less they had to escape the invaders working their way through the complex.

She shook her head in resignation and drew the same charm on the other side of his face, love and fear in the gesture as Echo leaned against the door to push it open and keep watch down the dim hall that led further back into the complex. “Please be careful. We need you.”

Rex put his hand over hers and squeezed. “You too.”

“Time to go. Sounds like a firefight off toward the north,” Echo said, tapping his rifle against his chest in a salute. “Good hunting, brother.”

“Keep her safe,” Rex said, stalking off through a different door and upward into the ominous gloom of the ground floor of the base, rifle heavy across his back, one blaster in hand and another tucked into his boot.

 

* * *

 

Sen stood, head tilted, in the darkness of a large space that might have once been a laboratory. Neat rows of tables ran down the room and shattered glass that might once have been beakers spread across the floor, covered in years’ worth of dust. His boots crunched through it like snow as he turned and strode down one of the rows closer to the far wall from the door he’d come in, only the faint smell of age and the acrid sting of his saber hanging in the air.

There had been no attackers at his point of entry, only a rigged bomb the Force allowed him to disable without ever touching. A quick, wild flash of satisfaction from wherever Koh was told him there had been a guard at Koh’s entrance, and Sen was briefly jealous.

Battle, noise, the whirl of red that was his lightsaber cutting through obstacles and enemies: those things pleased him. When he was left alone in an empty place like this with no stimulus, no immediate threats to deal with and no Koh to distract him, strange feelings sometimes came to him: guilt, fear, doubt, hatred, all incomprehensible, all ships without tethers left to float out to sea.

And in the last year or so, two names had come along with the emotions, collections of letters and sounds with nothing else attached to them either. They rose up again now, strange and foreign in his mind.

_Kenobi. Skywalker._

Sen hated those names because they made him think, and thinking beyond battle and lust was wrong. Thinking about anything in depth felt like standing unarmed as he called out into a dark wood in the middle of the night, inviting whatever awful things lived there to come find him.

Kenobi and Skywalker. _Targets we eliminated_ , he tried to tell himself every time they surfaced, to brush the names aside with the only reason he could think of for knowing names, but that didn’t seem right. Giving a growl as they came to mind again, he stalked to the end of the row and held up his hand, throwing open the next door with a surge of the Force and about to walk through when he felt a warning hiss radiate from its depths.

_Move!_

Spinning, bringing his blade up across his chest, he deflected a blinding spray of blaster bolts and sent them shooting up into the shadows of the ceiling overhead, hooded gaze locking on the silhouette standing in the far doorway he’d originally come through.

An odd crunching sound moved toward him across the broken glass, too low to be another attacker.

Sen looked down and realized the volley of fire had been a distraction: a grenade was rolling into place at his feet, coming to rest with its little red warning light blinking up at him.

Leaping backward with a snarl, Sen pushed himself back through the door he had been about to walk through with a violent gust of the Force and used another to slam it shut just in time. A muted boom echoed behind him as he landed in a roll and came up out of it with his saber spinning in a defensive arc.

The door groaned inward, warped from the impact, as the sting of smoke curled in around its corners.

No one was in this room, he was almost disappointed to note, and he turned back to blow the warped door off its hinges with a crisp wave of his hand, charging back into the one he’d just left and the billow of smoke and burning debris that now filled it.

There was no sign of the target, but there was only one way he could have gone. Adrenaline sang through Sen, pure and heartless, and he was once again at peace as he ran back the way he’d come, all thoughts of Skywalker and Kenobi gone for now.

 

* * *

 

Rex jogged through the shadows of the base, empty and orange-lit hall after hall, turning and weaving in different directions every time he came to a junction, glad for all the time he and the brothers had spent here. Now that he had the assassin on his tail and not moving further into the base and toward Ahsoka, he knew exactly where he was going, to an old disposal chute that would send him down and out into a river that flowed past the old station. Then a hidden craft and a day-long trip to the neighboring planet’s moon and the safehouse tucked away there.

Twice he activated and tossed a grenade behind him, the rattle and shockwave shoving around the corners and pressing at his back. It was more to slow down his pursuer and cover the sound of his footsteps: he knew it would take more than a lucky throw to bring down the man he’d seen standing in that laboratory.

_Red saber, black cloak. Even hooded, he blocked that blaster fire like it was nothing._

And rumors always said there were two of them.

Rex had never taken the time to dwell on what other rumors had said, ridiculous conjecture that sounded more at home in a bar than in any kind of intel briefing: they were the missing generals. Or maybe they were a new prototype of clone, made from Jedi. Or maybe they were Jedi Padawans captured for experimentation during the Purge. Or, Rex’s personal favorite, they were karking Jango Fett himself, risen from the dead with one of them sporting Jango’s head and the other his body. _All honor to the First,_ he added absentmindedly, sending another grenade over his shoulder before making a hard right.

_The only thing that matters is that they use lightsabers, which means short-range attack radius. Stay out of reach, stay alive._

Throwing himself against a wall, creeping along to the final turn he’d need to take as quickly as he could, Rex darted a glance around the corner and felt his heart drop.

The chute he needed was set in the wall halfway down this particular hall, the long, main one where all of the scientists’ living quarters had been. And coming this way from the other end was another grim hooded silhouette lit up in the garish red of a lightsaber, walking slowly and purposefully in his direction through the dim amber lighting.

_They’re meeting up, one in front of me and one behind._

Rex fought down the terror that rose inside and took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling and silently asking death to save his place by the fire for another time.

Throwing himself out into the hall, he made a desperate sprint toward the chute, aiming his blasts at random points on the saber wielder’s body to keep him off-balance enough he only had time to deflect them away, not aim them back at him.

Not understanding what he was doing, mistaking Rex’s furious run at him for a suicide attack, the hooded man made no attempt to hurry toward him, strolling almost casually down the hall in a weaving dance of crimson light as he repelled the blaster bolts and Rex’s footfalls echoed off of the plain, cracked walls.

Rex forced himself to stay in the center of the hall, not wanting to give any hints as to where he was going until the last possible second. _Come on! Come on!_ Somewhere far behind him he heard the hiss of another saber lighting up, a serpent slowly wending toward him from the darkness and smoke.

Swerving and slamming aside the metal door that covered the chute, he jumped in feet first and felt gravity take over, pulling him down as he continued to fire random shots in both directions. Rex started to slide and then just as suddenly was jerked back upward again, as if the whole planet had a grav system that had gone offline.

_What the..._

Harsh, unseen hands ripped him back out of the chute, flinging him against the wall on the opposite side and down onto the hard duracrete. Dazed, he realized the second man was standing over him, saber down at his side as he clenched his other hand into a fist, and Rex found himself lifted up onto his knees, a horrid pressure tightening around his throat.

The same unseen power ripped his blaster from his hand and sent it skittering down the hall, where the first man kicked it aside on his way to them. Two shadows come to life, here to end his in this rusting, forlorn stretch of hallway.

Rex stared up at the shadowed face looking down at him, body gasping for air but mind suddenly and strangely calm at the thought that this was the end as his captor raised his ruddy saber into the air. _I did the best I could, vod._

But the end didn’t come. The assassin paused, blade wavering in the air: he seemed to be studying him, examining Rex's face from the way he slowly bent his head left and right with the Force.

Choking, one hand clawing at his throat, Rex saw a chance and his inner calm vanished in sudden, desperate instinct. He snatched the second blaster from his boot and swung it up to point directly into the man’s face.

The next second was a blur of impressions, time stretched out in the way Rex had only ever known in the heat of battle.

The unique charging whine of the blaster as it fired.

The blue flare of it illuminating the man’s face, features Rex was horrified to see he knew as well as his own, and the awful vise around his throat vanishing as Anakin Skywalker cringed back from the shot, too late to avoid it taking off at least half of his head.

At the same time, a cry from behind him, loud and enraged -- “NO!” -- and a push through the Force so intense even Rex felt it like an icy wave crashing through his body and the deepest, most primal part of his brain as it passed through him.

The bolt hung there like frozen lightning, twitching and pulsing just under his old general’s stunned face, as Rex stumbled upright and dove back into the chute to the sound of feet pounding over to Skywalker.

Nothing pulled him back this time, and the whole way down and out into the river all he could see was that achingly familiar face, lit ghostly blue, the harsh line of a red saber raised up behind it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what do you think so far? Let me know, and thank you so much for your comments and support so far! <3
> 
> The next update will be in two weeks, give or take a few days. Have a wonderful week and thanks as always for reading!


	3. Wounds

Appo quietly padded down the latest in a long string of dusty, gloomy corridors just ahead of his squad, blaster half-raised and his right hand brought up in the signal for caution as he strained to hear anything. The signature of Sen and Koh’s implanted trackers hung like cold, blue fireflies in his helmet overlay screen, showing they were up around the next corner together.

The command ship up in orbit had relayed to him that their signals had showed no real movement for at least ten minutes, which was not a good sign for the two, who constantly roamed in search of new targets whenever they were set loose in enemy territory.

Appo didn’t think for a second even a trained guerrilla soldier like the traitor Rex could take down the Twins in a fight, no matter how lucky he got.

Something had made them stop, and the commander wondered if it would be like one of the Twins’ earlier missions, a neutralization operation targeting a Force-sensitive Zabrak hiding out on an Outer Rim world. _They seemed normal, for them anyway, but once they got within actual sight of him Sen didn’t stop until he was a pile of meat_. _Karking_ Koh _had to pull him off._

Not sure if he would be pleased or disgusted to turn the corner and find Rex rendered into a gruesome drift of limbs and organs for no apparent reason as the Zabrak had been, Appo gave a quick sweep of his fist left and right, hearing his men fan out behind him to stalk along the walls while he stayed in the center. _Let’s see what’s going on_ , he thought as he tapped the tracker overlay off and the two blue dots vanished from sight.

The dim orange lighting and deep shadows all around made everything look like it was trapped in cloudy amber, the stuffy warmth of unfiltered air adding to the feeling of being submerged, and as Appo leaned out into the hall it took him a moment to place what he was seeing. What he first thought to be a monstrously large black shape was two smaller forms, one of them on his knees and the other knelt down over him, their cloaks and cowls draped together so it was impossible to tell where one started and the other stopped.

But from the frantic way the one on his knees was shaking and the other one was stroking his back, their distress was clear.

 _Kriff me. One of them must have gotten wounded, though not too badly if he’s still sitting up._ Appo rolled his eyes, trying to ignore the uneasiness he felt at the charged atmosphere emanating from the two further down the hall. “Where are the two shinies?” he grunted over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off of the Twins.

“Arenn here, sir,” a voice whispered from somewhere on his left, smelling of caf and spice rations. “It’s just me. Liret… uh... stepped on a trap back at the south entrance.”

“Go see what’s wrong with him,” Appo said confidently, nodding toward the pair without looking at Arenn.

The _adiik_ ’s eyes grew wide as Appo glanced over at him, the washed-out green a light brown in the ruddy light. “Sir?”

“Did you not hear me, trooper?”

Arenn swallowed, gloved fingers tight on his rifle. The unsettling energy radiating toward them from the two men was just as clear to him as it was to Appo. “I thought… I thought we weren’t supposed to talk to them, or, or go near them if one got hurt, sir?”

“I said don’t touch them. You should be fine,” Appo snapped, hoping he was right. He really didn’t want to have to bring in another half-trained human idiot, but he also had no desire to go within saber-reach of them himself. “Go see what’s happened. Now.”

The _adiik_ lowered his rifle and then after a moment’s hesitation slung it across his back in an attempt to look less dangerous, taking cautious steps out into the hallway and craning his head. The two remained huddled together, apparently taking no note of him, as he began to walk toward them, removing his helmet.

Appo could feel and hear the brothers on either side of him tensing, faint creaks of armor shifting, and wished he didn’t feel the same way himself. It was more than enjoyable holding the leash on the Twins back on the ship, but out in the field it never truly felt safe enough for his liking. The commander thought of one of his first missions, trotting along behind a brother carrying highly volatile bricks of explosives in a bag on his back while his squad set bomb after bomb on a bridge.

This felt the same, and Appo ground his teeth as the human stopped just out of reach down the hall, calling out to the two. _Come on. Don’t screw this up._

“S… sir?” Arenn asked the kneeling one, voice stretched thin with fear as he almost clutched his helmet against his side. “Is he... is he injured? Do you need help?”

The hooded figure whipped around as if just now noticing him there, gold eyes gleaming and beard dark in the weak light. _Sen_ , Appo saw with a bit of surprise. _Usually he’s the one to get hurt._

“What do you see, trooper?” Appo called out as Koh lifted his head to stare at a point somewhere further down the hall, whispering something over and over again.

“Ah… uh… looks like he got grazed by a bolt, Commander.” Arenn crouched down slowly, peering intently at the wounded Twin from what he prayed was a safe distance. “Nasty burn running hard up the side of his throat, jaw, and uh, ear, and I think there’s a hole in his hood. Third hell, he got lucky.” He followed the line with his gaze and then pointed upward at the ceiling to a fresh ring of soot in the cracked ceiling tiles. “He was right on top of whoever shot him."

 _So where’s the body?_ Appo thought, annoyance threading through his fear and Koh’s repetitive, nearly inaudible whispers grating on him. “What is he saying?”

The human squinted, peering at Koh before looking back in the direction of Appo. “Uh… I think he’s saying 'no more', Commander, but I-”

And then to the sound of a garbled cry his head was rolling off into the shadows that laced the edge of the hallway, cleanly severed by a sharp swath of red light as his body collapsed to the ground.

The clatter of rifles being yanked into firing position exploded all around Appo and he gave a loud curse and angry wave of his hands as Sen spun his saber from where he stood, head tilting in a silent assessment of the squad now training weapons on him. “Stand down! Stand down, I said!” Shoving the nearest blasters down and hissing curses at the men holding them, he was relieved to see Sen remain where he was as the squad hesitantly began to lower their rifles.

Sen’s golden eyes, flecked with red from his saber, flicked across each helmeted face with a cold disinterest: with their blasters pointing at the ground they were too far away to bring Koh any harm in any other way, that look said, and so he would permit their continued existence. He deactivated his saber and returned it to his belt without comment, returning his attention to Koh, who in his shellshocked state hadn’t seemed to notice Sen’s attack or the body thumping to the floor next to him.

It lay there, the neck now ending in a neatly cauterized stump, smoke trailing lazily into the air and the head that had been attached now a shapeless thing off resting in the gloom against the wall.

Standing, Appo cleared his throat to make sure his voice wouldn’t catch when he spoke. “IA-01, IA-02, report,” he demanded, not moving any closer to them as his gaze briefly dropped to the body sprawled at their feet. _Dumb bastard had to get too close, didn’t he?_

Koh and Sen both turned to focus on him in that strange mirroring way of theirs, Sen pulling Koh to his feet and Koh trailing off in the middle of another repetition of what Appo could now hear better and did indeed sound like ‘no more’. “Three hostiles neutralized. No Jedi encountered,” Sen responded after a moment.

Koh opened his mouth and then closed it again as if trying to find words and failing.

“Source of injury to IA-01?” Appo prodded, lifting his hand in the ‘stand down’ signal to remind his brothers to be still even if the question produced a strong reaction in either of the Twins, but he didn’t think it would. Observant and a creative thinker, as all commander-level brothers had been engineered to be, Appo had noticed some time ago the more formal his language was the faster the Twins would calm down in situations like this.

“CT-7657,” Koh answered with a soft growl, pushing his hood back and lifting his throat to present the wound for inspection.

Appo stayed where he was, cautious but glad to see conversation was back on the table. “Current condition and location of CT-7657?” he asked, dreading the answer as he surveyed the clean hallway and lack of a body that wasn’t his own trooper. _Rex escaped. Koh was right on top of him and he escaped? How in the kriffing name of the kriffing First did that traitor escape?!_

“Uninjured. Unknown,” Sen said, the same anger twisting Koh’s face marring his own as his gloved fists clenched at his side. “Request permission to pursue and complete mission.”

“Denied,” Appo spat, biting off the curse words that wanted to tumble out of his mouth at their failure and the questions that would only antagonize them more. They would have to wait until they were calmer, he realized. _Possibly sedated._ “Command detected several launches nearby before the vessels disappeared into the noise signature of the hills around the area. Target has been lost.”

Unseen under his helmet, the commander frowned into the darkness, past them, but there was no way around it. The primary objective of the mission had been Rex, and Rex was gone. “IA-01, IA-02, Mission N-034 is ended. Report to the gunship at the south exit. Report to the medbay immediately once back onboard Command.”

He glared at them as the Twins nodded and walked past, the rest of the squad shifting uneasily against the walls as they strode past in trails of black. _The Emperor will not be happy to hear about this._

“You,” Appo sighed in frustration at the two closest brothers, throwing a hand back over shoulder to vaguely indicate the motionless _adiik_. “Get his body. And his head.”

 

* * *

 

An hour later, in the command ship floating in high orbit, Sen silently watched from a corner of a private medbay room as the medics worked on an anxious Koh and tried to calm himself down.

To onlookers, he was perfectly still and as unnerving as ever, an odd, frightening form in the midst of the clinical sterility all around him as he sat with his hood pulled off and his arms folded. Only Koh knew Sen was almost unbearably tense, victim to a strange trembling of his soul that persisted despite the light sedation they had both been given to ensure compliance with the doctors’ orders.

Cold, white-lit examining rooms like this bothered Sen even more than the unwelcome and quiet blackness of ruins and abandoned enemy bases. Where the latter left him too much time to think and ponder strange emotions that came to him, the former often surprised him with terrifying and random images and sounds he couldn’t make any sense of but sent his heart racing out of control all the same.

This time there was at least a tenuous connection to what had just happened, but that was of little comfort to Sen, who did his best to keep these nightmarish vignettes in his own mind and away from Koh.

_Darkness. “Eight.” Outside of the darkness, the sound of a blaster shot, the grating whine pitched down into that of a non-lethal setting, and a cry of pain. “Nine.” Another shot. Another cry._

_Someone screaming something incoherent that vaguely sounded like speech. It sounded like whoever it was was begging the shooter to stop._

_“Then stop the bolt. Stop fighting your hate and use it.”_

Sen closed his yellow eyes, bile rising in the back of his throat. He had a vague understanding he’d just saved Koh down on the planet, the memory far from clear in the chaos of what had happened, but the target had only fired once. Who were these people he was hearing echoes of in his mind?

Who was that creature, barely human, begging in anguished sobs for the shooter to stop?

It was like watching thunderstorms drift by on the planet far below, horrible tangles of black that floated along without touching him, and Sen took a deep breath and focused once again on Koh, the odd cacophony of misery slowly fading from his mind.

 _Better?_ he silently asked once he trusted his mental voice to be calm enough to speak to him. Koh felt on edge and angry, mirroring Sen’s own seething rage as he took in the ugly line of bacta patches sprawling down Koh’s throat.

They had more than enough reason to be upset but there was a sense of betrayal to Koh’s aura Sen couldn’t make sense of. _Koh?_

 _I know him_ , Koh answered, their link suddenly awash with the remembered face of the target kneeling in the muggy, shadowy hallway of the research station. _I don’t know why. But I know him somehow._ His wrath, a muffled thing in his drugged state, still gave sharp, unforgiving detail to the man’s features.

 _Clone. We see the same face everywhere,_ Sen thought back at him with a quick flash of Appo’s face and a dozen others.

“No,” Koh murmured, the doctor stepping back a little more quickly than he would admit to at the sudden utterance.

“Do not be alarmed. We are finished. You may return to your rooms,” the med droid, as clean and empty as the medbay itself, said from the opposite side of Koh, misunderstanding why he had spoken.

Sen watched Koh touch the bacta patches as if testing their reality, and felt fresh disbelief welling up from under the sedative, unsure if it was his or Koh’s.

 _He shot me_ , Koh repeated, golden eyes meeting Sen’s as he repeated himself with furious certainty and righteous anger despite the nonsense he was saying. _I know him and he shot me._

 

* * *

 

Koh’s strange insistence on this idea lasted the entire walk back to their quarters, his mood darkening as the final remnants of the sedative burned itself out of their systems.

Sen watched as Koh paced back and forth in long strides across their bedroom, a shade passing across the blue ocean of hyperspace outside the room’s long window, glaring at the floor as he muttered to himself. Both of them were still in their black combat suits, only their boots, cloaks, and gloves off and left as usual by the door in the living room.

“Koh,” Sen tried again for the fifth time, exasperated as he shoved his thoughts across the room to him. _He is a target. We saw him in the file. That is how you know him._ “Look.” He held up the datapad open to the mission details, thrusting it into Koh’s face as Koh turned to stomp back across the room.

Koh snarled and slapped the datapad out of Sen’s hands.

It shattered as it hit the ground, the pieces skidding across the hard flooring to a jumble in the corner, and Sen barely had time to bring his eyes back up from it to avoid the other fist swinging at his face.

Leaning back, he caught Koh’s arm on instinct and spun him around, flinging him against the far wall of the room with a rough cry of surprise.

Koh landed with a satisfying thump before whirling with a breathless, insane grin on his face at this new development as Sen took a few steps back. _Fight? You’ll lose._

Sen knew he was smiling just the same as he sank into a crouch, the bond between them pulsing with adrenaline and excitement. _Fight. I’ll win._

Koh shot forward with a quick punch, aiming for Sen’s chest, but Sen danced away, landing a solid kick square against Koh’s back. Stumbling, Koh righted himself and turned in just enough time to block Sen’s next kick, sliding out from under it.

Their bedroom was a spartan affair, like the rest of their quarters, and beyond the datapad the damage to the room was minimal as they fought on, Koh flipping Sen onto his back on the floor and Sen tripping and throwing Koh into the cold, unyielding glass of the window. The constant mental presence of the other made this particular game deliciously impossible to win, every punch and kick an intent broadcast to the opponent before it was a reality, but winning was not the objective.

With every hit that landed and every crash into something, pain radiated through them and began to clear away their confusion and snarl of emotions about the failed mission until they were both panting with the dull promise of fresh bruises singing all along their bodies, ones that would lay unseen for now but would bloom into sickly sweet purples by the next morning. Koh would have a black eye the next day to match his wound on his neck, and Sen would have a sore jaw for the next week.

Neither could tell who had which injuries in that moment or who was swinging and who was dodging, their bond so strong and overwhelming they were once again no longer truly aware of where the boundary markers of their mental or emotional selves lay as they fought and fell back, attacked and retreated.

But even in the wild tumble of their bodies and minds, thoughts of CT-7567 stubbornly continued to rise up, and the next time Sen flung Koh to skid across the floor on his stomach Sen realized which one of the two he was: _the one standing, the one with no bacta patches on his throat. The one that doesn’t think he knows CT-7567._

Growling in frustration at the stray thought, he went with a new tactic, whipping his belt off of his suit and dropping to straddle Koh before he could get back up, pinning him face-down on the cool, smooth flooring and roughly yanking his arms behind his back.

The smack of the rigid tiles against his body jolting him into a clear understanding that he was the one on the floor, Koh laughed breathlessly at Sen’s weight atop him and the fresh spark of pain tracing down his shoulder as it was bent back.

He struggled and tried to buck Sen off even as he gave a shocked gasp of approval at the feeling of Sen wrapping the belt in harsh, greedy lines around his arms.

This was an even better game for forgetting, they had learned over time. Pain mixed with pleasure.

Closing his eyes with a smile at the way the unforgiving leather bit into his skin, Koh let his cheek fall against the floor and bit his lip as he felt Sen fumbling at his waist and his own belt being snapped out from its loops, wondering what Sen would do with it.

He didn’t have to wait long: he felt Sen’s cool fingers slide it loosely around his throat and then he was awkwardly tugged to his feet with it, both ends caught in a tangle in Sen’s fist at the back of his neck and Koh’s balance off with his arms tied behind his back. A new, unfamiliar arc of lightning shivered through Koh as the belt around his neck constricted in a testing way, a valley of pain along his throat, and he almost wondered where that sensation was coming from. _CT-75_ \--, he had just enough time to think before Sen jerked on the loop of leather again and the question and numbers vanished in a bright flash of blissful agony.

Their minds spiraling into one once again, they knew that with a simple twist of his hand left or right, Sen could tighten it until Koh would see stars, and Koh bucked and fought to make sure he would. Sen happily obliged, his beard rasping along Koh’s skin as he pulled Koh back against his chest to kiss and suck at the uninjured side of his throat.

Letting out soft whimpers as he felt himself growing hard, grinding his hips back against Sen’s, Koh stumbled along as Sen shoved him forward to and then down onto his stomach on the bed, letting go of the belt around his neck and letting it slide onto the mattress beside them as Koh brought his knees in and tried to sit up. Sen rolled him over with a violent shove and tore open the front of his suit, sliding a hand down to grab at Koh’s stiffened cock.

Koh let out another groan as Sen worked his hand up and down it in slow, teasing drags once he found what he was looking for, leaning over Koh to fumble with his other hand along the knot he’d tied behind his back. In return Koh gave sharp, biting kisses along Sen’s chest and the cool black fabric of his suit as Sen grinned, loving the way they pricked at the skin beneath.

The belt around his arms came loose and Koh’s hands immediately shot up to grab at Sen’s throat. They wrestled with vicious abandon for a little longer, Sen managing to tear Koh’s suit down off his shoulders to bunch around his waist, the line of zipper teeth down the front raking along Sen’s palm as he grabbed at it and blood welling up as they fought and rolled across the bed. It smeared across Koh’s arm, as bright as his saber, as Sen landed on top of Koh and forced him onto his stomach on the mattress.

Sen pinned Koh’s hands behind his back to tie him up once again as he had before, Koh panting excitedly against the rumpled sheets as Sen grabbed his hips and jerked them up. There was a final ripping of Koh’s suit down to land against his knees and the cool air of the room against his thighs and his now almost unbearably erect cock.

 _Sen…_ he begged, straining against the leather digging into his arms, against the hot length of Sen pressing against his thigh, against the second belt once again digging into his neck and the wound he no longer cared how he had gotten as Sen leaned over him, panting and gasping Koh’s name. Nothingness, beautiful and thoughtless oblivion was almost theirs. _Hurtmelovemepleasepleaselovemehurtme..._

And Sen did.

 

* * *

 

In a fancy apartment nestled high in the towers of the Coruscant senatorial district, Padme Amidala sat against the ring of glass windows that ghosted down from the ceiling every time one of the area’s pre-planned thunderstorms rolled through, shutting off the open-air living area from the cool, rain-soaked breezes and sheets of water that soaked the landing bay outside and left the buildings off in the distance hazy, grey monoliths.

With the Empire’s increased scrutiny of all of its lawmakers and a recent and very public series of executions of those deemed traitorous, it had been weeks since she had dared to even answer the unregistered comm Bail had given her the last time they’d seen each other.

The Rebellion was out there, and she and a handful of other senators fed it information as they could: things they overheard, things they saw, the faintest gossip or rumors that might help. It felt as useless as the wind gusting against the cold metal skyline, the patter of rain sweeping in and out of the valleys between the forest of massive towers, but Padme persisted. She didn’t know any other way, and she was tired of feeling helpless in the face of the Emperor and his tyranny.

So this morning, when she had awoken to the comm buzzing from the secret bedside drawer she kept it in, the pattern a particular one signaling of an incoming message from off-world, she had opened it without hesitation.

Sitting up with it in the darkness of her room before dawn, she had given herself a moment to wake up a little more, relieved to finally be doing something.

It was audio only, as they always were, but this message had began with a statement rather than the usual request for information. “Warning, top priority. Home base, pass along to all cells currently operating,” the speaker said in clipped, tense tones. A clone, from the sound of his voice. “Do not… do not engage with saber-wielding Imperials, the two codenamed the Twins. They are not rumors. They are real. And... and they are…” a bone-deep sigh so heavy the grief could be heard through the static, “They are Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Padme had dropped the comm into the folds of her silken nightgown at the names, staring in horror as if it had suddenly become a poisonous spider. “Repeat,” the message continued as she covered her mouth, choking back a cry, “they are Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Do not engage. Retreat advised. Do not engage.”

With a beep, harsh in the predawn blackness all around her, the message ended and automatically deleted itself off of the comm as it had been programmed to do, only the gentle hiss of rain coming down outside to keep her company.

All messages received from Rebellion sources had to be given a random amount of time over three hours before they were passed along, even on comms like hers, so as to not create any consistent patterns in holo chatter for the careful eye of the Empire to pick up on.

Padme didn’t remember exactly what she had done in that first hour after hearing the awful transmission, but she knew how she had spent the last two.

She had wandered out to sit against the cold glass ringing the living room, still wearing the pale blue drift of her trailing nightgown, her legs drawn up under her with a box off to her side and a forgotten cup of caf on the other as memories paraded across the apartment in front of her.

Anakin Skywalker, a sweet summer storm of a little boy, bright blond hair and serious eyes, gazing up at her in awe. His new master, the handsome and shy young man by his side lost in grief as he stood with Padme and her nobles before a celebrating crowd.

Meeting Anakin again when he was older, so much older, and as handsome as his master was now dignified.

Anakin assigned to protect her. That awful planet they’d had to fight for their lives on.

Their affair. Anakin suggesting marriage the morning after their first night together and Padme laughing it off. _We have duties, Anakin. I am a Senator, and you’re a Jedi._

But she had fallen in love with him, missing him terribly during the long stretches he was away during the Clone Wars. And he would always come to see her when he was on Coruscant, sneaking away to share a meal and sometimes bed with her.

She had started to just entertain the idea of one day possibly, maybe marrying him, and then he had returned so different from before: bandaged, limping, his braid gone and his title now Knight instead of Padawan. Something horrible had happened, a mission gone wrong. He was the lucky one, he had told her with a sad smile. His master was with the healers in the Temple, vanished into a tank of bacta for a month or more.

She had felt it before he said it, what he was going to say, and it had still stung all the way to her bones when he did. _I am sorry, Padme, but I can’t come see you anymore. I… I’m a Jedi, and I shouldn’t do this._

They had hugged and she had smiled, proud of his maturity even as she was disappointed it was over.

When he and his master had disappeared she had been as stunned as everyone else, not knowing any of the details beyond the fact there were no bodies on the battlefield, and when the months dragged on without any sign of them she had quietly made peace with the fact they had perished in the chaos of the battle.

Ahsoka, the dear little Padawan Anakin had taken on, had messaged her a year after their disappearance with a favor to ask. A request to keep the box of personal effects the soldiers had cleared out of Anakin and his master’s tents until she could return from the war to get them. The Temple wouldn’t accept them, Ahsoka had explained, and would probably burn them. And she couldn’t bear to look at them yet but she wanted to someday and she and Padme were friends because Padme and her master were friends and could Padme just please hold onto the box for now?

The little Togruta had not meant to hurt her, and Padme had accepted the shipped box, deciding it could be one last bittersweet favor she would do for her former lover, the gods of the dead keep him at peace and rest.

Order 66 had swept through the galaxy in a tide of blood and bodies one week later. The endearing little Padawan would never return for her masters’ things, likely as much in the Force as they were at this point, according to the now-outlawed Jedi belief.

And so Padme had left the box unopened for months afterward, shoved back out of sight into a closet, until one day her curiosity had gotten the better of her, the longing to remember something from a happier time.

What she had found now sat in her lap as she gazed across the living room, the storm behind her and emptiness ahead, lifting the caf to her lips but not tasting it.

It was a journal, Anakin’s master’s, a heavily-used book covered in worn, brown leather and tied off with a cord. At first it had been as foreign and meaningless as the little carved figures she had guessed were Anakin’s, and the schematics for a ship type he had probably hoped to build someday, the writing in the journal mostly factual, bloodless recordings of battles and troop losses.

But every now and then there would be a personal entry, written in his master’s elegant, impatient hand, and it had comforted her to read about sunsets on ocean worlds and the bright pull of the stars when sleep wouldn’t come.

She would flip through the journal until she found one of these and savor it, smiling gently at the record of a more innocent time.

Until she found one of the last personal entries, the one that the journal sat open to in her lap now. She had read it so many times she almost had it memorized, but it hurt just as much as the first time and she welcomed the pain just as she always did, the chance to dwell on a personal tragedy rather than the vast, hopeless one unfolding around her.

_We have taken the capital city here after an endless, brutal three-week long campaign, and when I woke up this afternoon-- I think it is afternoon-- it took me a moment to recognize him lying next to me._

_It has been stims and battles and blaster fire for so long I had forgotten how beautiful the sunlight looks caught in his hair, like a crown of golden Telladorian lacework. I had forgotten how soft his lips are when I cup his cheek and run my thumb along them, how he shifts and murmurs in his sleep with a smile as I touch his mind with the Force._

_He whispers that he loves me before he is asleep once again, curling into me in this tiny cot and smelling of that awful, stinging rations soap. And I am the happiest I have ever been, in these quiet moments with him. He is mine and I am his and I still cannot believe it, any more than the day he confessed to me and I stared in shock at hearing my own thoughts said aloud._

_And there are some days it frightens me to the very bottom of my soul, that perhaps I have asked for more than I deserve, that I am never destined for happiness and that one day this will all end. Please have mercy, Force. Please let me be with him always. Please._

Padme sipped her caf and waited another hour before sending the message along, her tears finally dried and the journal replaced in the box, the rain drumming gently outside and the towers looming empty and featureless along the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo hoo, another update? Welcome to Angstland, folks. I hope you have a season pass...
> 
> So what did you think? Let me know and thank you as always for all of your support, comments, and kudos! I love you as much as Appo loves being a jerk in this story.
> 
> (I don't know why, but Ao3 keeps copying my first chapter note onto other chapters. I promise I am continuing this story until it's done!)


	4. The Captain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all! Remember to check the tags in case you have anything you're sensitive too. Happy reading, uh, I guess?

Ahsoka had always remembered certain moments in her life with perfect clarity: some important, some not. The day Master Plo had found her, how funny his voice had sounded reverberating through her montrals, the kind way he’d spoken to her with words laced in light.

The way the sun had shone off of a gunship door one hot, balmy morning as its engines had rumbled all around her while she and a squad descended into the orange froth of some forgotten planet’s forest canopy.

It was the Force, her master’s master had once said in a quiet moment when she’d shared this odd patchwork of stubborn memories with him. It, he had said, recognized better than any one person could what moments mattered even if those involved did not for a long while.

This would be one of those moments, she knew, as soon as Rex came into the little four-bunk room on this little ship and shut and locked the door behind him. He looked weary, far more tired than his day-long travel from the overrun base should have left him, and she saw everything, felt everything in her bones. The haunted look in his brown eyes, the sound of the door sighing shut behind him, the feeling of his calloused hand sliding onto her shoulder.

“What is it? How many did we lose?” she said, dread coiling in her gut.

“Three. Jump, Guts, and Hollow.”

That was horrible in and of itself, but he wasn’t done, she knew. There was something somehow worse than the loss of another three of their tight little band, and Ahsoka drew her knees to her chest and hugged them against herself as she watched and felt him sink onto the bunk next to her and bury his face in his hands.

“Vod?” she whispered, scared to move but reaching out anyway, touching his back and letting her fingers trail down the bulk of his shoulder.

“It’s them. I… I just sent out the warning to the other cells,” he mumbled into his palms.

“It’s who?”

“The two with the lightsabers. They’re... “ He lifted his face and met her puzzled, wary gaze with so much pain in his own she almost didn’t hear what he said. “They’re our generals. Your masters, vod. Skywalker and Kenobi.”

A shudder passed through some distant point in the ship, only the faint, creaking thunder of landing gear coming up breaking the silence between them.

“No,” she said, once the strange words had drifted past her like smoke, unreal and bitter. “No.”

“It’s them, Ahsoka. I wish it wasn’t. I would give my own armor for it not to be. I saw him. Skywalker. And I heard Kenobi. They’re alive.”

“They would never fight for the Empire,” she hissed, for the briefest of seconds hating him with such an intensity guilt instantly swept in behind it. _How could you say something like that? About them?!_ The tall, lanky shadow of Anakin standing in the sunlight over her swam across her mind, handsome and proud, Obi-Wan calm and dignified next to him. “They… they were the heroes of the Republic! Nothing could ever make them fight for the Empire! Ever. Ever!”

He took the spark of her rage and let it burn him, not looking away, not raising his voice. There was too much sorrow weighing his own down for anger to give it any volume. “It… I don’t think they chose to, vod.” Rex paused at the memory of a lightsaber hissing to life somewhere behind him in a long, dark hall as Skywalker strolled toward him with the callous grace of a man utterly without conscience.

Swallowing, trying to find the right words and failing, he reached out and put his hand over her knee even though she tried to slap it away in anger. “Stop it. Think, vod. How long have they been missing? How long since they were taken?”

She shook her head, lekku shifting, not wanting to hear any of this. _Stop stop stop!_ “They died in that battle! The chips malfunctioned early and Cody and the others shot them!” Tears started to well up in her eyes as she realized there were worse things than that horrid scenario she had mourned over for so long. “We, we just never found the bodies!”

“You never believed that and neither did I, Ahsoka. That was what the Senate investigators said. But we knew better.”

“Rex, this is insane! You knew them! They would never, never serve the Emperor!”

“They’ve…” He looked past her, at the patched wall behind her, his own grief stark. “...they’ve been gone for years, vod. Years is a long time to… to make someone into whatever you want.”

“No,” she whispered, burying her face in her knees, her cheek against his hand still resting there. _This isn’t happening. No. Not them. Not while I’ve been free and safe all this time._

His voice dropped but he kept talking, unable to stop himself. “I saw them. They tried to kill me. They were empty, Ahsoka. I, I don’t know how to describe it anymore than that. Like shadows. Nothing inside.”

She gave a sob at that, warm, wet tears against the back of his hand, and he stared hard at the dull metal plating on the wall behind her in an attempt to keep his own from falling.

 

* * *

 

When Rex finally came out, Fives and Echo were leaned up against either side of the door like sentinels, their own faces dark with grim thoughts.

Frowning, he nodded for them to follow and waited to speak until they were far down the hallway, closed off in the little common area the dozen or so brothers aboard this particular ship used. No one was there at the moment, everyone exhausted and resting quietly in their own shared rooms and bunks, and Rex was glad for it.

He ran his hand along the helmet left sitting in the middle of the room’s only table, an old bucket now bearing three new marks atop older ones running along the side of it, before he sat down and the other two followed suit.

“She’s asleep,” he sighed as Fives tapped the helmet three times before carefully moving it aside to the end of the table.

“How did she take it?” Echo asked, leaning forward and his voice low.

“She didn’t believe me at first.”

Fives shook his head. “I can’t blame her. It’s… it’s horrible.”

Rex clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling the muscles contract and relax, watching the scar on his left hand shift with the movement, trying to lose himself in the simple repetition of nerve and muscle and bone. “She thinks they have a chip like we did,” he said to his hands, tone unreadable.

Echo frowned over at Fives, who shook his head and scrubbed at his dark hair. “I caught a glimpse of the one that came in, the one that surprised Jump while he was at his post. Rex, that’s not a chip.”

“I know.” He brought his hands back up, rubbing his temples in an attempt to stave off the headache coming and the images of the Twins in the ruins. “She wants to try to capture them. Do the same shock technique we’ve developed for the brothers, the one we used on you, Echo.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the table.

“Could we?” Echo asked, folding his arms.

“The only reason I’m here is Skywalker hesitated. I’d be dead otherwise.” Rex sat up straight, violently forcing down the swells of his own misery and anger, thinking of all the men counting on him just as surely as they had during the Clone Wars. The brothers were different, but his duty and responsibility was the same. It always would be. And nothing, no former happiness or bond or friendship, could take away from the cold, hard truth of the situation and what it called for a captain to do.

That didn’t make Rex hate himself any less as he continued, years of warfare allowing him the strange cognitive dissonance needed to reduce two of his former closest human friends to cold numbers and strategy. “It’s not them anymore. It’s all of their skills turned against us. You saw them fight back in the day, boys. We get stuck in the same place with them, a ship like this one or a base we don’t know that well? We’re all dead.”

Rex felt his soul harden, his voice coming out as distant as he felt. This was the Captain’s voice, not his, and he let the Captain say what he couldn’t. “If we encounter them again, there won’t be any capturing them. It’s too risky. I don’t care what Little Sister says.” He glanced down the hall toward her room and back again, lowering his voice. “We get the chance, we shoot to kill. Keep it quiet and pass it along to the others.”

Fives and Echo looked down, torn, and Rex felt his voice shake, just a little. “Alei da’han,” he murmured solemnly, standing up and stalking off back toward the bridge to check in with the pilot.

Fives thought about the ancient Mandalorian phrase, about the honor it implied: the mercy killing of a respected enemy when he was too injured to live with pride once the battle was over. “Alei da’han,” he repeated to Echo, who said nothing as he watched Rex disappear down the hallway.

 

* * *

 

“Your Grace,” the lead medic said with a low, anxious bow, all six wide eyes staring at the duracrete landing pad in front of him. “To what do we owe this honor?”

There had been no warning, no notification, just a frantic call from the comms tower that Count Dooku’s distinctive ship was cutting through the Coruscanti night, coming in for approach, and the man himself would be on base in less than twenty minutes.

Dooku said nothing as he strode past him, flicking open his comm as he walked. He despised the doctor, who fell in wordlessly behind him. He despised this entire place, from the medics that skittered about like so many frightened rats to the way it was tucked away in the tumbledown ruins of a long-abandoned industrial sector.

In a grainy wave of blue, a hooded ghost rose from the disc in his hand. “Greetings, Lord Tyranus,” Sidious smiled. “Do you have a report on the condition of the Twins?”

“I am going to see them now, my lord, as you commanded,” Dooku said as the heavy doors rolled apart for him at the end of the landing pad and he entered a smooth, barren set of hallways mercifully free of the salty, metallic tang that hung in the polluted air outside. “Perhaps their usefulness is coming to an end if they cannot be counted upon to terminate a simple clone.”

Medics and personnel scurried out of the way, made hazy by Sidious’s silhouette in front of him. “Would that please you, my apprentice? To finally see your supposed rival dead?”

Dooku snorted and waved with impatience at the droid that approached with a smooth bow and turned to lead him to one of the larger examination rooms deeper in the complex, the doctor still trailing meekly behind them. “He is hardly a rival anymore. Your ‘doctors’ have ruined him.”

Another door slid open as Sidious chuckled, revealing bright light and more doctors standing around over a set of carts gleaming with various surgical tools and implements, discussing something in angry tones. At Dooku’s entrance they stopped and moved back, instantly silent and bowing as the blue smudge of light that was Sidious continued. “Perhaps. We will see if they still have some use in them yet. Send me your report by this evening.”

“Yes, my Master.” Dooku snapped the comm shut and sighed at the two sleeping shapes strapped down to the only gurneys in the room, the antiseptic smell that permeated this place especially strong in such a contained space. Skywalker had a black eye and some kind of wound bandaged up on his throat, it seemed, and both of them were covered in bruises that glowed sullen purples and yellows along their arms and legs and chests.

 _Pathetic._ _And you thought he would turn for you, Master._

Ever the astute apprentice, Dooku had known Sidious had chosen Skywalker as his replacement as soon as Dooku’s spies brought word the arrogant brat and Kenobi had been brought to this grim place far below the sparkle of Coruscant’s skyline. Something had apparently forced Sidious’s hand and moved his timetable up for Skywalker though Dooku had never figured out exactly what the catalyst had been.

In the beginning, Sidious had slyly told Dooku the orchestrated disappearance was simply a tactic to demoralize the Republic with an added opportunity to inflict endless misery on the two Jedi that had complicated his life so many times.

Dooku had known better.

And it had taken so much restraint, so much of that Serenno polish, to only look on blandly as Sidious’s mood grew darker and darker as the weeks turned into months. Informants heavily plied with credits told Dooku that Skywalker refused to turn no matter what offers were made and later what agonies were forced on him and Kenobi.

As time dragged on, Dooku’s amusement had eventually soured into disgust at the waste of it all, until one day he boldly told his master his thoughts on the matter as they stood on the same landing pad that he had just come in on, rusted hulks of factories rotting in the distance behind them. “You can’t kill Kenobi or Skywalker will follow, Master. This is a waste. Kill them and be done with it.”

Sidious, the old, stubborn fool, hadn’t listened. The Emperor had been too caught up in his pride and surety that pain would eventually break whatever bond the two men had, but Dooku had faced these two in battle time and time again. He knew what Sidious ultimately wanted was impossible: there was no Skywalker without Kenobi. One would not turn without the other, and one would not live without the other.

Dooku was sure of it, even if he couldn’t pretend to understand: the pair were like the lovely, proud kaliuk birds of his homeworld that mated for life and died within hours of each other when the time came.

Unfazed, Sidious had simply redoubled his efforts, and Dooku doubted even Sidious knew when his zealous attempts to bring Skywalker to the dark side had dissolved into pointless, vengeful torture for the two men’s audacity to defy him.

In the end, for all of his successes across the galaxy, the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious had failed at this one seemingly simple task, overseeing nothing more than the defilement of their bond and minds.

He had made them strange and wild, and when he had tired of tormenting the two that now only knew the names Koh and Sen he had placed Dooku over them out of sheer spite.

 _Like a nanny_ , he sneered as he stepped closer, peering down at the two restrained men. “Report,” he commanded the droid now waiting in the corner with the doctors.

“IA-01 and IA-02 are functioning within normal parameters,” it said, as a doctor offered a set of flimsiplasts Dooku ignored.

“Is that so? The Commander’s report would suggest otherwise.”

“If you are referring to their failure regarding the primary target, there may have been a complication regarding their background with the target and their previous association with him,” the droid said thoughtfully, lacking the fear the organic doctors regarded Dooku with. Droids had no ability to sense the tides of the Force like people did.

“What, they remembered him?” Dooku snorted. “You cannot be serious. Wake Koh.”

“Sir?”

“Wake him.”

An injection and a rough slap to the face later, Skywalker groaned and blinked up into the bright lights, his golden eyes unfocused. Dooku heard him call out blindly through the Force to Kenobi, and heard Kenobi answer him faintly and instinctively from the depths of his own unconsciousness.

The doctors had, early on in the Twins’ captivity, developed a particular cocktail of drugs that allowed them to retain minor control over the Force while sedated. It was not anyone’s first choice, but as the two lost more and more of their original selves and began answering to their new names, they became more and more psychically entwined. Violent and deadly outbursts followed even the shortest periods whenever they were cut off from the Force and their strange, silent way of communicating with each other.

Dooku had only ever seen them use these small flows of the Force to reassure themselves the other was present, as if that meant anything in the end. Whatever awful thing Sidious had commanded to happen still happened, just with a screaming, usually incoherent audience present.

 _So much waste._ It annoyed Dooku to no end someone of Kenobi’s talents had been lost like this, reduced to this sort of shell when so much potential had been there. _And for what? Skywalker? A slave, a common brawler with more arrogance and pride than anything else?_

_This is what he gave up all of himself for?_

“Good evening, Koh,” Dooku said, foul mood darkening as he saw Skywalker try to roll his head to face Kenobi across the gap between their gurneys. “I have a question for you.”

He had been thinking of a random question to make his point, but at the last second pure spite steered him to a particularly appealing one. _I hope you are still somewhere in there, boy, and that you hear me_ , he thought with a sneer. “Tell me, Koh, how did you lose your arm?”

Skywalker’s gaze slid back to him, deeply puzzled, as he swallowed and squinted into the overhead ring of lights that made his black eye even more obvious against his tanned skin. “What?”

“How did you lose your right arm, Koh? Why is it you have a metal one, hmm?”

“I…” He considered this, licking his dry lips. “I don’t know. To… To make me different from Sen.”

Dooku smirked at the memory of the long-ago fight he’d taken Skywalker’s arm in, how unbelievably overconfident the boy had been and how beautifully his defeat had rung through the Force.

“I don’t know,” Skywalker repeated softly, his expression as empty as those of the marble statues that lined Dooku’s villa.

Dooku waved a hand over at the uneasy doctors, gesturing to Skywalker’s confusion. “You see, you idiots. If he cannot recall that simple fact at this particular moment, there is no possible chance he hesitated in pursuit of that clone for the reason you imply.”

Skywalker fell silent, frowning, as Dooku folded his arms and refused to look down at him again, fixing his icy glare on the lead doctor and droid across the gurney. “There could be any number of reasons the clone escaped, almost all of which are far more likely than your lazy conclusion. These two are simply mad dogs at this point. They only look like men.”

“IA-01’s brain scan is showing increased activity, sir.”

“Good. Wake up Sen too. Put them both through Level 2 questioning and a full medical exam. I want answers before I lea--”

Something shifted in the Force around them, a small, sudden tilt, and Dooku had just enough time to wonder if Kenobi had woken as well when Skywalker interrupted him, voice still and cold as the first star hanging in winter twilight. “You,” he hissed. “You cut it off.”

The Force bucked again in a small, wild tremor, far too slight to do anything Dooku expected Skywalker to try, like snapping the cuffs buckled over his wrists or throwing Dooku across the room.

Dooku would have laughed at the pitiful display, but there was movement and a flash of light from the cart where the doctors’ tools were already laid out for the expected exam. One of the scalpels shot up at him like a viper, and Dooku’s world exploded into vicious, unbearable pain that threatened to rip his head apart.

Someone was screaming, he realized.

Two people, actually.

And one of them was him.

The other was Skywalker, howling and raging from his gurney, and then more people were screaming and shouting about injections, but it was all so distant in the face of Dooku’s agony.

He was too busy inspecting with trembling hands the blunt handle of the scalpel protruding from his right eye, trying to place it as a real thing that existed in the same world he did.

When he collapsed to his knees with a heavy, undignified thud, the last coherent thought to pass through his mind before darkness set in and he tumbled lifeless to the floor was a sudden, irrational fear he would get his cloak dirty when he fell over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you go. Don't poke the dragon, folks.
> 
> So a big hello from insane Work Land, which is keeping me super busy this month... Thank you all for all of your comments and thoughts here and on Tumblr! (I'm writegowrite over there, if you want to come say hi.) I will try to get caught up on comments in the next few days.
> 
> Let me know what you think about this trainwreck of angst... I'd love to hear your thoughts, and thank you as always for reading! <3


	5. The Honored Dead

Commander Appo walked in stiff, formal steps through the palace’s lofty entrance, hands clenched tightly behind his back and nodding to the men who saluted him as he passed. He still thought of this airy, grand place as the Jedi Temple, no matter how many red and black banners hung like ghosts from the rafters and how many statues had been replaced with the abstract, unsettling twists of stone sculpture the Emperor preferred.

There was no fondness in this persistence of the Temple in his mind: the last time he had been here it was when he had lead his half of the 501st first in the elimination of their Jedi officer, Mace Windu, and then in wholesale slaughter through the complex from one end to the other on the day of the Great Purge. The grand irony that Appo and his men had been recalled and stationed in the Temple to guard it following an unsolved bombing had not been lost on him, and he wondered as he looked around the solemn building if the Emperor had had something to do with it.

Such thoughts were not safe, and as he made his way through the main hall he quickly pushed them aside and let his anxiety and anger focus on a familiar target as he studied how neatly the damage had been repaired, all the blaster marks and bodies gone as if no violence had ever touched the simple stone walls. _Rex._

All of the honor Appo’s half gained for the 501st on that fateful day had been immediately lost by his counterpart: Rex had been in line to lead the other half out in the field once his Jedi commanding officer was eliminated, but had instead fought off his own men and vanished with the Jedi in a humiliating turn of events.

_You will pay one day, traitor, for the shame you brought onto the 501st. And I swear I will be the one to bring it to you._

_If I live that long._

Appo crossed his right hand across his chest to give two subtle taps on his left shoulder as he passed by the massive stairway where he and two squads had taken down the Jedi Windu after Order 66 had come through. The gesture was one of respect for the worthy dead: the man had fought on longer than Appo and his men would have thought physically possible before finally falling to his knees and taking a blaster bolt to the head.

 _Walk with me, honored one, in my time of need_ , he thought grimly to himself, the formal phrase bringing him a little comfort. There were no enemies in death, the brothers believed, only luck that could be drawn from the places where the strong of either side had fallen.

Appo continued on, focusing as best he could on keeping his breathing calm and even, willing his hands to loosen up a little behind his back. After all, the Twins were his responsibility in the field, Dooku’s responsibility on Coruscant.

_The Emperor can’t possibly think to blame me for Dooku’s death._

_Can he?_

He swallowed as the final set of doors rose up ahead of him and the red draped silhouettes that were the Emperor’s personal guards stood aside to allow him in, unsure of what he would find waiting there.

 

* * *

 

Kneeling on the floor, bent over so far his hands and forehead pressed against the cold tile and the world around him dimmed by the cowl he wore, Koh awaited his master’s words like the empty weapon he was.

Koh thought of himself as a blade, one with a pure, viciously sharp edge hidden in a scarred sheath. It was not an abstract conception of himself, but rather one of his first memories: he was kneeling, bound, in pain that was frightening at that point rather than the strangely soothing companion it would later become, and there was the truth of himself in front of him.

_An old short sword resting atop a wooden box, half-pulled from a sheath marred and disfigured almost beyond use._

The memory was blurry. Koh believed he might have been crying at the time, but he could only remember relief, so overwhelming it had almost stopped his heart.

_Here was who he was._

_Someone was talking, explaining in rasping tones that this was one of two swords called “koh” and “sen” in the old Korriban language, part of a traditional set that had once belonged to an ancient king of that world. The voice spoke from somewhere above him, quiet, hoarse words drifting down to him like ash, laced with dark power._

_“That is why you are named that, you see. You will be my blade. Like this one,” it had said, and Koh remembered feeling a burst of beautiful, perfect longing at this. Yes, he wanted to be anything the voice told him. He wanted to do anything the voice told him._

_That voice controlled his entire existence and the endless pain that formed it. Who hurt him. How they hurt him. For how long._

_And who hurt Sen._

_But at that moment that voice no longer took from him._

_It gave._

_It gave him a purpose, and Koh wept with exhausted relief into the folds of a black robe dropped to pile by his feet. He would become that shining, perfect blade, freed from the worthless, battered sheath that held it._

And Koh was. Now, folded over in the gloom of a chamber darkened save a few weak lamps, he frantically told himself that was what he was, but the calm, icy emptiness that had been the baseline for his entire existence that he could remember had a hairline crack of terror running through it as he huddled, knelt before the owner of that calm, impassive voice. His master.

“Koh, are you aware of what you have done?”

Sen knelt in the same terrified way just out of reach to Koh’s side, and Koh resisted the urge to reach out with his hand or his mind for comfort, curling the metal framework of his fist against his chest instead. _Master will hear anything we say, even if we are silent._

_Master knows everything._

“Yes, Master. I…” Koh fought to make each word come out, an awkward tumble of a confession into the heavy black of his sleeves. “I killed a man.”

“Why?”

“He took my arm, Master.”

“Why did he do that?”

“I… I don’t know.” This was true: once Koh had realized in the middle of his euphoric rage what he had done, abject terror had wiped away any coherent thoughts that might have tried to form. _I killed someone like Appo. Someone Master set over us to tell us his will when he is not with us._ Horrified his punishment would be given out to Sen instead of to him, as had often been done before, Koh’s heart hammered in his chest but he resisted the urge to beg.

Begging only made things worse. “I am sorry, Master.”

His master chuckled, but Koh remained so tense his muscles ached, not daring to look over at Sen and draw his master’s attention to him. Laughter from his master did not mean forgiveness, or kindness. Laughter only meant amusement, with no clue given as to where his mood might suddenly pivot to next.

“I suppose I should be angry with you, but in truth you have done me a favor, Koh. A little sooner than I would have liked, perhaps, but the old fool no longer served any real purpose. But do refrain from murdering your superiors in the future, hmm?”

“Y-yes, Master,” Koh murmured as he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, not daring to question his luck.

There was the sound of the door opening, and the thud of boots coming toward them across the grand room. “Commander Appo,” his master called, voice unreadable.

“Your Highness. You summoned me?” From the sound and feel of it, Appo came to a stop between Koh and Sen, his fear a crackling line of electricity through his aura. Even though Koh wasn’t looking, he knew Appo knelt as well.

Everyone knelt to their master.

“Yes. Tell me, Commander, before the unfortunate incident with the Count, had you noticed any… issues with the Twins?”

Koh stared at the ground, terrified once more, unsure of what his master was referring to.

“No, Your Highness.”

“Do you feel they could withstand encounters with Jedi without further incidents?”

Koh understood each word individually but together they made no sense to him and he felt the same puzzlement drifting over from Sen. Together they had eliminated dozens of Jedi without fail and without mercy. Targets were targets. _Did we miss one in the last mission?_ Koh thought to himself in confusion.

Appo’s response came quickly and confidently, his fear receding in the Force a little at the direction of the conversation. “Yes, Your Highness. They have never hesitated in neutralizing Jedi, to my knowledge.”

“How effective would they be in capturing them? I find myself in need of a new… protege after the loss of the Count.”

There was a pause and Koh blinked down at the ground, even more lost, as Appo considered this aloud. “Almost… almost all of their missions have been neutralization with no quarter given to any combatant, Your Highness. They would likely need some time away from their usual assignments to be reacclimated with, ah, the notion of leaving a target alive.”

“Then they will have it. I think I will make them my bodyguards for a time. Let them practice capturing the assassins the rebels send after me.”

“Is that…” Appo bit off his words but then continued, most likely at a gesture from their master. “Is that wise, Your Highness? To keep them so close to you?”

“They know me. Don’t you, Koh? Sen? ‘Weapons have no fear. Weapons have no mind. They exist only to serve.’”

“We serve,” Koh murmured against the backs of his hands as he heard Sen say the same, the ritualized words soothing and taking the worst of the edge off of their fear.

“And who do you serve?”

“You, Master.” _Please let us serve you. Please don’t hurt Sen. Please don’t hurt me._

Koh could feel the sadistic grin in the question that followed. “You hear it in their voices, Commander, do you not?”

“They fear you, Your Highness. Completely.”

“As they should. Sen, do you remember what happened the last time you angered me?”

“Yes, Master.”

Koh let out a whimper at the memory, unable to keep it in, and a dark, vicious satisfaction bloomed in the Force from the dais above him.

“Do you wish that to happen to Koh again?”

“No, Master.” Through their bond, Koh felt Sen’s own abject terror press down on his own, Sen crumpling further against the floor and Appo’s cold disdain floating over all of it, the commander’s thoughts clear and sharp as ice.  _Weak. Pathetic._

A quick flash of anger shot through their fear like reflected lightning before it was gone again as their master began to speak, both Koh and Sen nervously hanging on his every word.

“Hmm. Commander, you will oversee the Twins’ arrangements and training while they are with me. Make use of the intelligence network and old Temple database to assemble a list of likely targets for them to capture when they are returned to the field. I want powerful Jedi. Ideally young Knights or Padawans.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

 

* * *

 

For the next three months after the Imperial attack on their base, by day Ahsoka diligently monitored the rebel holo chatter for anything that would indicate further attacks by the Twins and by night meditated so long in vain attempts to reach out to her masters she would fall asleep sitting up against the wall. Rex would find her slumped over, chin on her chest, and tuck her up into her bunk with quiet, concerned murmurs about stubborn little sisters.

Their ship continued on its random, endless arcs along and back across the Outer Rim, stopping here and there to train locals and pick up supplies and messages to carry them along to other rebel outposts. Ahsoka had once found a sort of peace, a kind of equilibrium, in continuing her Jedi mission to help others even if the Jedi no longer existed, but now every time someone thanked her for her help all she could think of was her masters and how she had failed them.

 _I gave up too quickly_ _on you_ , she cried to herself in the shower one night when the guilt was too much, the hiss of the water and thrum of the moisture recycling system loud enough to cover her sobs. _I should have known something was wrong. I should have kept looking._

_Just give me one chance to help them, Force. Please. Just one._

And then one night on a nameless world, after another long and dull day in a stretch of many, she sensed something in the Force, a deep, dark shock that made her turn in her chair, but her masters weren’t the source of it.

It was Rex.

He was sitting next to her in a dingy little pub at the long, cracked line of the bar itself while they waited in hoods and cloaks to meet the latest recruits to the ever-growing rebellion. It was a typical hole-in-the-wall, loud and filled with disreputable sentients of all kinds and the type she and Rex had been in a hundred times before.

Fear and disbelief rolled off him like a giant wave rearing up over the horizon, crashing toward her through the Force and blotting out the spice-tinged smell of the place.

“Trap, vod? Do we need to leave?” she muttered in Mando’a, gripping her hidden sabers tight and glancing around.

“No,” Rex managed, and she twisted her neck to follow his wide-eyed stare up to the holo news feed playing on a cracked screen hung in the corner behind her.

Palpatine was delivering a speech in front of elegant red columns adorned in gold patterns, the courtyard of a palace on some Inner Core world. And behind him, flanking him as they stood in the shade of the columns and nearly invisible, were two motionless shadows in black, hoods obscuring all but the somber lines of their mouths.

“It’s them,” she whispered in horror, stunned as she put together Rex’s reaction with their height difference and the beard apparent on one, her stomach sinking with cold, merciless certainty. “Isn’t it?”

He nodded, barely hearing her.

Ahsoka watched the screen in total silence, trying and unable to reconcile these intimidating wraiths with the men she had known: Anakin, sometimes angry and bitter but brighter than the sun when he was happy, always ready with a joke and always trying so hard to do what he thought was right. And Obi-Wan, kind and calm and never complaining no matter how much was put on his shoulders.

 _Oh, Masters…_ she thought, heart so tight in her chest she almost couldn’t breathe. _I know you would never serve him._ But there the two stood, unmoving, obedient.

_What have they done to you?_

Palpatine kept speaking, the holo channel paying no attention to the men behind him, and she tried desperately to release her emotions into the Force and keep her voice quiet and composed as she pointed to the screen. “Excuse me, what planet are they on?” she asked the bartender, a wiry Twi’lek with a faded scar across his throat, as he poured a frothing blue drink and handed it off to someone behind her.

“Oh, that’s Telladoria, sweet-tails. A few systems over if you take the Rusata hyperlanes. Part of a tour he’s taking, I think,” he said, tone dry as he followed her gaze up to the feed. “I’ll be honest. The Emperor doesn’t seem your type.”

Ahsoka slapped her credits down on the bar, the clack of metal on synthwood startling Rex out of his trance, and turned to stride out through the crowd.

Rex blinked at the bartender, who raised a questioning eyebrow, and then dug in his own pockets and tossed his own money down before pushing his way outside.

He found her stalking down the main street back toward their ship, her cloak swirling behind her and passersby darting out of her way on instinct as she strode through the night-time crowd packing into the entertainment district. She was tall and beautiful and terrifying, he thought, even if you didn’t know she was a Jedi.

“Vod?” he hissed, finally reaching her and grabbing her arm to lead her off to a quiet alleyway where more shadows gathered than on the neon-lit road before them. “What in the first hell are you doing?”

“It’s them, Rex!” she retorted, blue eyes wide. “We have to go get them!”

“Vod…” Rex dropped his hands back into his cloak to check that his blaster pistols were still in place, an old habit when he was nervous. The alley remained still and silent around them and he tried to focus on her and not the thousand fears running through his mind.

“You don’t think we can save them.”

“They were right there with Palpatine!”

“So they’re with him now. What’s easier than finding out where that bastard is, huh?”

“Getting caught when we try to go after them!” he said with a frustrated wave.

At his words Ahsoka's fire burned out without warning and she suddenly felt as empty and brittle as the drift of broken glass along one of the alley walls as it caught the harsh glow of the streetlamps. “Rex… I… please…” Lifting her hands, she tried to gesture, to make words form around the vast, endless weight of her sorrow.

“I know, vod.” He was there, hugging her, his hand on the back of her neck, and Ahsoka sank into him, burying her face against the rough fabric of his cloak and the hard muscle of his shoulder. It was soothing in its familiarity and she closed her eyes, fighting for balance within herself.

“I have to try. I know you don’t want to, but I have to try.”

“I know. Believe me, vod, I know.” He sighed wearily, his chest rising and falling against hers. “But right now we are here to meet people who are risking their lives to get their planet back,” he gently reminded her, voice a low whisper against her neck. “We can’t help your masters tonight. The people of this planet come first tonight.”

Pulling away, hands still warm on her shoulders, grounding her to this world and to his words, he continued in a tired, somber tone. “A soldier never abandons his post or his mission and these people are depending on us to help them. They spent months reaching out to us and setting this up.”

She lowered her head to look at the ground, a fresh wave of shame at her outburst snarling her emotions further. “Let’s go back. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ran out.”

“I understand, vod. I know you just want to help them.”

She looked up at him, a cold determination in her eyes, and he frowned at the sight of it. “We will train this group together, Rex. And then I’m going to rescue them. You can’t stop me. I’ll steal a ship if I have to.”

“I… I know. That’s why,” he sighed, looking up into the dim, starless grey of the sky. “That’s why I’ll go with you.”

He regarded her with such solemnity that it cut through her sorrow and left bewildered puzzlement behind. _Do you really have that little faith in the two of us, vod?_ she wondered, but said nothing as they both turned to head back toward the garish facade of the bar. _We can save them and escape without getting caught. I know we can._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone!
> 
> Thanks as always for your support of this, possibly my angstiest (is that a word?) story yet! I have changed the chapter total from 8 to 9 because something I originally planned to have happen in this chapter just didn't seem to work, so it'll appear in the next one. Let me know what you think of what's happened, what you think might happen, and how good of an idea it is for Ahsoka to go try to save them!


	6. Bonds

Sen woke in the middle of the night to Koh nuzzling against him, murmuring his name in frightened desperation, pressing his cold nose into his throat and his warm body against him under the sheets.

A heavy snow fell outside the windows of this particular guest room, one of many in the palace their master was staying in this week. The cold crept in past the ornate fireplace and heavy hangings on the wall, just enough to settle cool on any skin not hidden underneath blankets. It was silent and dark, and the two of them were together. It should have been enough for them to be at peace.

It wasn’t.

Sen pulled Koh in closer, frowning against the top of his head even as Koh’s shaky hands began to wander along him, searching for distraction. Since the failed mission with CT-7567, Koh had slowly developed a pattern of nightmares and sleepwalking they had been careful to hide from their master and Commander Appo.

Koh could never remember what they were about when he finally woke, always in strange places, often shivering and crying. Usually he would come to walking down a hallway, but once Sen had found him huddled against an airlock door on their command ship. On another occasion while they were planetside somewhere in the Mid Rim, Koh had awoken standing on a mansion’s balcony railing twelve floors up, tears cold against his cheeks in the lingering night breeze.

Fright had startled him back off down to safety, but after that they slept curled even tighter together than before, Sen’s hand always tangled in the gentle curls of Koh’s hair so he could sense if Koh moved, and the pressure able to wake Koh if he shifted too much.

 _Nightmare_ , Sen said rather than asked as he wiped tears from Koh’s eyes, Koh’s anguish flooding through him and back again like a black tide riding in and out.

 _Help me, help me helpme_ , Koh begged, grinding his hips against Sen’s, breath hot on his neck and his metal hand hard on Sen’s back. And Sen did, as he always did, murmuring Koh’s name back to him, stroking and soothing him, making his own mind as blank and calm as he could despite his own fear and worry for them both.

If Koh kept doing this, Appo would find out. And then their master would find out. And neither wanted to know what would happen then.

When Koh’s anxiety finally sank out of sight, subsumed in the hard, steady rhythm of Sen’s hips between his thighs, Sen’s remained, bitter and stark as the snowstorm outside, hanging over them just out of reach no matter how good Koh felt under him.

Lost in his own lust, the nightmare forgotten, Koh writhed and bit his lip and begged in the way he knew Sen liked, that they both liked, and in the end, for a few searing seconds of release, Sen forgot his worries too.

 

* * *

 

Almost a month later a small shuttle glided down through the thin, wispy clouds of a desert world toward the land that lay harsh and beautiful before it, stark mountains jagged lines stumbling along the horizon all around it.

Ahsoka and Rex sat inside, silently watching out the cockpit window as the thin, lofty spires of this planet’s capital city came into view, the tallest stained with the red and black banners of the Empire trailing like ink across the sky. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Rex asked, glancing over at her as he keyed in the landing permission code they had bought at a hefty price in a dingy bar on one of the planet’s handful of moons.

It had been a strained, awkward trip for both of them, their usual easy, affectionate way with each other stretched thin by worry and doubt and harsh emotions that left them alternately snapping at nothing or numbly withdrawn.

“Yes. I have to try to save them. But,” Ahsoka paused, gaze sliding away out of the window and a weary resignation to her voice as she took in the fleeting glints of silver that were other ships spiraling into the port below them, “I think, after this, if it doesn’t… if it doesn’t work… I think I might want to take a break from things for awhile.”

“What do you mean?” Rex said, simultaneously angry with her on a deep, protective level that she thought the biggest potential issue of this trip would be not being able to rescue the generals, and puzzled at her new, apparent acceptance of that possibility.

“There’s a Jedi temple, well, an abandoned one,” she said, looking back at him with a bittersweet smile, reaching over to rub his arm. It was the first touch they had shared in days, and he put his hand over hers as she continued. “On Varen IV’s moon. I visited it once.”

The words summoned the hazy impressions of a bright day, a sun sparkling on a lake, the elegant remains of a temple set along the shore, and the gust of a brown cloak ahead of her, snapping in the wind as its owner smiled back at her and pointed ahead.

She swallowed, willing herself not to get lost in the recollection, and pulled her hand back from Rex’s arm to charge the secondary landing stabilizers as they sank down toward the landing field. “It’s been abandoned for centuries, and no one knew about it other than the Jedi Council. I was thinking I might go stay there for a while if… if things don’t work out with here. If you and the brothers wouldn’t mind. I just, I don’t think I’ll be any good in a fight for awhile.”

Relief swept through Rex, and he tried not to sound too enthusiastic about the idea for fear of making her reconsider. Traumatized soldiers needing a quiet place to gather the bits and pieces of themselves back up one at a time was something he’d seen time and time again in the wars, and he felt a guilty pang at not recognizing this need in her before she did. _But you out of harm’s way, vod? Somewhere safe and hidden? Yes._ _A hundred times yes._

“Would you be upset? If I took some time alone like that?” she asked, blue eyes searching his careworn face.

“No, not at all,” he said, shaking his head. “Maybe you could write down some things from the Order like you’ve talked about?”

There was a pause before she answered, studying him, and he wondered not for the first time if she was reaching out with the Force to attempt to read his emotions. “You’d like me to stay there ten years, huh?” she said, trying to tease him but unable to truly smile through her anxiety about what awaited them down below in this warren of curving lanes and sandstone.

About who might await them at what would hopefully be the middle of this strange, desperate little trip.

“Twenty,” he joked back, reaching over and squeezing her shoulder in a mirror of her own caring gesture.

It wasn’t the Jedi way, Rex thought with a mix of fondness and fear, to go into a battle expecting to die and being pleasantly surprised if you didn’t. That was the way of the brothers, the way that kept them calm in the face of frequently overwhelming odds, and one of the only things that she had not absorbed from them.

Jedi hoped fiercely and brightly, always believing they would win in the end, and one couldn’t blame them, he told himself, for being blind to some of the harder truths of life.

Ahsoka looked over as if she were about to say something else, but the final landing approval came back in a harsh chime and burst of static from the port tower and the two of them began the complicated teamwork needed to help the vessel float carefully down and land in alongside a hundred others like it on a bare, shimmering field of duracrete.

 

* * *

 

Three days of careful, discreet surveillance of the local palace the Emperor and his silent bodyguards were staying in both comforted and concerned Rex. There seemed to be a steady stream of pleasure slaves and prostitutes, low and high ranking, coming and going with trooper escorts from the guest wing the Emperor and his retinue were in. The last were distinguishable by the overly wide brimmed straw hats they wore trimmed with long drapes of gauze that hung down to hide their faces and the lack of tacky, ostentatious red and black patriot ribbons the cheaper ones thought themselves clever for wearing.

Ahsoka, in similar garb, would have no problem going in, they had both agreed, and possibly even Rex as her escort, once they “borrowed” a set of the newer Imperial style of trooper armor from one of Appo’s men that they had tracked wandering around the city in random shows of force.

It was the quick, nervous way many of the same women left, often within half an hour, that made Rex’s gut twist as he thought of things going wrong and Ahsoka finding herself in whatever situation had left these women so frightened. _Are they for the Emperor? Appo’s men?_ the Captain coldly asked, ticking off names like numbers on a map.

_The Twins?_

“Whatever happens, we don’t get split up,” he told her in Mando’a under his breath as they stood in a local clothing shop the fourth day, their hooded forms drab amid colorful stacks of embroidered silks and ornaments of silver and golden bells and flowers. “I mean it, vod.” _I will not let anything happen to you._

“We won’t,” she reassured him with absolutely no effect on his darkening mood, taking a gorgeous deep blue swath of fabric from a shelf and turning to ask the shop clerk in Basic if she could show her how to wear it.

Ahsoka’s plan was worthy of her old master, a simple one, alluring in the confident way she explained it to him and that dazzling noon sun of hope shining within her, too blinding to let her see his anxiousness for her. They would go in, she would find the Twins through their old bond if she was not already being taken to them, and once she had found them she and Rex would convince them to escape with her.

Rex’s plan was simple as well, showing more of the Captain side of him than he wanted to admit, the Captain side of him that had been more or less in control ever since she had said in that grimy alley several worlds back that she wanted to go after them.

His plan was to go into the palace with Ahsoka, find the Twins, and kill them.

They were too dangerous to catch. They were too far gone to be saved.

They had to die. They would want to die, Rex was sure, if they could speak for themselves anymore.

_Skywalker would never want to be a slave again._

_Kenobi would never want to hurt innocents._

He knew these things as surely as he felt the soft rugs of the shop beneath his feet and smelled a light incense drifting through the air from a small altar by the door, but his grim certainty did nothing to lessen his growing dread at what was to come.

“Help! I’m being eaten by this thing!”

Leaning against the door, folding his arms, Rex watched Ahsoka laughing with the clerk as she came out of the dressing room with the indigo fabric wrapped clumsily around her and the fringed ends hanging in a limp, ugly knot over her shoulder.

As she met his unreadable gaze, giggling and pointing at the tangle of fabric, he smiled back at her as brightly as he could, trying to commit every detail to memory because he knew she would never smile like that at him again when this mission was over.

 

* * *

 

The next day they strolled through bright sunshine and the plazas that spread wide and empty around the palace, heading toward the side door most of Appo’s men and the women seemed to use.

Ahsoka had cried herself to sleep the night before, Rex sitting next to her with his hand on the back of her neck as she sobbed into a pillow embroidered with delicate flowers. “You don’t have to do this,” he had whispered in the dark of their little rented room. “No one will judge you if you don’t.” He wished he felt the same way about himself, but the Captain was already making a contingency plan to remain behind if Ahsoka gave up and went back to Wolffe and Echo waiting on a larger ship in orbit.

“I have to. They would do the same for me.”

“They would not ask you to do this. To risk yourself like this.”

“I have to try, Rex. Being scared is no reason not to do something.”

“Which one of them said that?” he asked quietly, voice tender as he squeezed the back of her neck soothingly.

“Both of them. Different times.”

And so here they were, he observed, purposefully hunting down the Twins like naive children running into tall grass to look for snakes.

Rex took a deep, steadying breath, letting it out through the grate in his new helmet in a slow, controlled exhale and patted his blaster pistols at his sides, taking further reassurance from the weight of the rifle slung over his back. _May the First walk on my left and the honored ones on my right_ , he found himself praying as they advanced slowly toward the heavy door and the two white-armored men standing guard there.

The donor of his new armor and weapon lay unconscious and locked away in a warehouse further out in the city, likely unable to be found for hours. He had been a human of similar height to Rex, and after a persuasive hand wave and application of the Force Ahsoka had been able to get the soldier to tell Rex his name and the passcode needed for the initial entry in.

Ahsoka walked in outwardly calm, unhurried steps beside him, lovely in blue and her face and reddened eyes hidden by one of the wide-brimmed hats roomy enough for her montrals and draped with gauze. She had borrowed one from the entryway to one of the sprawling brothels just outside the plaza: the hats hung together under the buildings’ awnings in trails of translucent white, awaiting their owners’ trips to the homes, markets, or parks nearby.

Without hesitation, Ahsoka had casually availed herself of one on one of the quieter side streets when no one was looking their way, her distinctive striped lekku vanishing under delicate silk. Rex had pretended not to notice how her hands shook as she arranged the hat, both of them agreeing while a Togruta might only earn a second glance, if that second glance came from any of the clone veterans of the 501st it might lead to much larger problems.

The impressive lines of the palace rose up higher and higher before them until they were standing at its base before the two soldiers stationed on guard duty there, who were slumped back against the wall in utter boredom with blaster rifles lowered.

They both nodded to Rex as he keyed in the code and then the two looked curiously at Ahsoka, murmuring to each other in Mando’a about how a Togruta was something new. _Clones, then_ , she realized, wondering if they were anyone she had known from the wars and a new wave of ice frigid in her gut.

She pretended not to notice them talking about her, but her hands tightened under her shawl. There was something small and secret she had tucked away into the gossamer folds of it as she had dressed this morning, the soft music of some kind of flute echoing from a nearby patio.

Ahsoka had been patting it all morning, worried about it somehow slipping out of the unfamiliar garment. But the lump was still there, small and hard and reassuring. _I’ll find you two. I swear it, Masters._ The urge to reach out through her bond leapt forward once again, and she pushed it down as firmly as she could.

The bond was a last resort, one she hopefully wouldn’t need.

“You know where to take her this time?” the clone to Rex’s left said as the security system accepted his password with a gentle chime.

Rex shrugged, unwilling to try imitating the Outer Rim accent of the human they thought him to be unless he had to.

“Damn, are you _dumb_ , Lorrig. Third floor. Down at the end of that hallway with all the bird-things painted on the ceiling.”

Heart pounding, Rex nodded as the door slid open, standing aside to let Ahsoka walk in first in a silent sweep of blue.

“Actually, you know what?” The brother caught Rex by the arm, shouldering his rifle. “I’m tired of sitting here. You’re up for guard duty anyway. I’ll take her there.”

Rex froze, turning to look in at Ahsoka as calmly as he could and then back at the brother. “I got it,” he grumbled in a passable mimicry of the man they’d questioned, but the clone didn’t let go.

His grip actually tightened instead. “You think you outrank me?”

“We’re the same rank,” Rex growled, glancing at the man’s insignia.

“No, human, we’re not. Pardon us, ma’am,” he said with a cheerful smile to Ahsoka, who hadn’t moved, a blue shadow in the deep oranges of the palace hallway. “Sometimes our newer recruits are a little slow at grasping where they stand.”

“Yes, sir,” she said with a little bow, and to someone else it might look as if she were hugging herself out of shy anxiety but Rex knew what she meant to tell him: _I have my sabers. I’ll be fine._

“You hard of hearing today, Lorrig? Do you need some sense knocked into you?”

 _I can’t attack these two without making a scene. I can’t risk my helmet coming off either._ Grinding his teeth, not even the Captain seeing a way out of it that did not put them at immediate risk from the snipers likely stationed higher up along the palace’s rambling balconies, he turned back to glare at the brother through the visor and stepped into place to a snicker from the second brother who had been watching, tapping his hip two times as if trying to burn off nervous energy. _You have twenty minutes. Then I’m coming in._

 

* * *

 

A warm gloom spread over Ahsoka and the clone striding past her to a wide, spiraling set of stairs as the door ghosted shut behind them. “This way, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, careful to keep the unbearable snarl of her hope and desperate ache for her masters under shields as best she could as she trailed up behind him, jeweled sandals silent. Master Obi-Wan and Skyguy were here, but the Emperor she was half-sure was a Sith was here too. “Are you taking me to...?” she asked, leaving off to see what answer he would give.

“Yeah, them. The Twins, we call them,” the clone answered over his shoulder, stretching and yawning, this speech one he had clearly given many times before. “I don’t mean to frighten you, ma’am, but they’re pretty weird. Most girls who come here leave quick. I don’t think a single one has been, uh, successful. But you and your establishment are still not allowed to talk about them with anyone. By royal order.”

The puzzled look on Ahsoka’s face remained hidden by the veil over her face, none of his words making any sense to her but her voice coming out remarkably calm. “I don’t frighten easily.”

“Well, yeah, for that many credits you’d think not many would, but most all of them do. Pardon a humble trooper’s opinion, ma’am, but if I could carry a baby and looked good in rouge I’d be in there too.”

She felt her body jerking to a halt and forced herself onward up the last few steps, hands curled into fists at her side and wanting to shove him back down the stairs at the horrible things he so casually referred to. “How… how long has this been going on?”

“What, ‘Operation Little Twin’?” He considered it as they walked, ignoring a servant who hurried out of their way and bowed as they passed. “The last three or four planets, I think? One of the girls on the last planet told me the letter her brothel got was so roundabout it took them a week to figure out what it meant.”

Ahsoka felt a murderous rage leap to life inside her at his words, coalescing like a tornado out of the steadily building storm clouds in her soul. _I can’t kill this man. I’m not here to kill him._

_Palpatine wants a child out of them?_

_Out of Anakin_ , she immediately corrected herself, hating how her mind raced too quickly for her to stop going down a twisted, awful path she knew in her heart to be true.

_Anakin always was more powerful in the Force._

The clone stepped off into another long hallway of deep orange stone with graceful winged creatures painted in stylized designs all along the ceiling, unaware of the anger boiling inside the woman behind him. “Anyway, here we are.”

Ahsoka’s unease grew as if something waited to jump out at her from the walls, but it was only the faint, growing sense of two Force-users in one of these rooms up ahead. Powerful but strangely fractured, melted and fused in a way that made them unrecognizable as two individuals.

 _No. That can’t be them. Whatever that is it is nothing like them._  

She clutched the tiny bundle in her robe tighter as they walked in silence down to the end, so lost in her thoughts she almost didn’t hear the trooper speak as he dropped down to sit on a stool outside the last door at the end of the corridor and jerked a finger over his shoulder. “I’m to stay here while you’re in there, ma’am, and then see you back out. Don’t worry, they don’t ever hurt girls.”

Ahsoka ignored him, drawing herself up to her full height and trying to give herself courage as she studied the simple door, painted a brick red, and waved her hand at the sensor to open it, one designed like a lily pad with a trace of dew on it.

Stepping inside, she disappeared into the shadows of the room and a strange, mutilated gash in the Force that reached down into her pain and her anguish and took her breath away as surely as if she had stepped from the shallows into a trench, air and light far, far overhead in the crushing blackness.

 

* * *

 

Resting after a night shift guarding the Emperor at a lavish feast thrown by the local ruler, Koh was warm and safe and dozing off when the door slid open and a tall, willowy shape slipped inside their room with a faint sense of the Force clinging to her like stars reflected in dark waters.

Koh narrowed his eyes, his thoughts once again so in line with Sen’s he only had to think to himself about what he saw for the half-asleep Sen to see it too. The room was not bright enough to clearly show this new intruder, lit only by weak rays and fragments that shone in from shuttered latticework windows. _Another one._

Sen stirred and opened his eyes, hand still tight in Koh’s hair as he watched the girl freeze in place as they both regarded her.

This was nothing new.

Most of these strange new visitors never even made it fully into the room. Sen and Koh could always feel their fear as they backed away, one untrained Force-sensitive’s mind open enough he could see what she saw: two golden-eyed predators lounging in shadow, staring at her with a total indifference that suggested her death would not cause them the slightest regret.

The truth was Sen had no desire to murder any of them, and neither did Koh. They were not targets.

But they had learned a cold glare did a lot to dissuade these overly friendly women that had begun appearing several stops ago, and so they both fixed her with that same hard look, unmoving as she reached up and took her hat off to absently drop it on the bench next to the door. She was not terrified of them.

Not wholly. The anguish in her aura beat as clearly and vividly as a heartbeat, and something in it and the blue of her eyes and lekku stirred a similar pain in one of them. Sen or Koh, neither could say. But it hurt. It burned like fire.

They lay unmoving in bed, unable to look away from the girl ringed in the flames of this strange new agony rushing through them.

“It’s me. It’s Ahsoka,” she choked out, overcome with emotion that flared from her and through them before reflecting back again.

 _Stop!_ Koh cried at her in a blind panic, burying his face against Sen’s chest as Sen cringed back from her, knowing somehow this Togruta would hear him. _Stop!_

She flinched back as if burned herself, letting out a trembling sob at the story the simple word told her, the pain that sang along it and under it and whispered in horrifying clarity through the Force all of the ways they had been made this way.

 _Leave! Go! Please!_ one of them begged through the violent emotions pounding through the Force between them, absolutely no recognition of who she was in the plea.

 

* * *

 

Ahsoka had imagined their reunion going a hundred different ways, but none like this.

The two men she had adored and loved and fought with and bled with lay just across the room from her after years of mourning and then guilty rage. But they shook like children confronted with a monster, arms around each other, staring at her in golden-eyed terror at this power she held over them.

Seeing them together was no surprise. Their relationship had been a particularly poorly kept secret around the men and their padawan for months before they disappeared. But seeing them together like this, the two of them empty and unrecognizable, an awful reflection of what they had once been, crushed her heart in her chest until she couldn’t breathe.

Ahsoka wanted to cry and scream and destroy this entire palace, this entire world, and her emotions beat hard and dangerous against her shields, threatening to spill out in an explosion of rage. Instead she thrust her hand into the waves of blue she wore, crossing the room in slow, careful steps to hold out a simple line of colorful beads to Anakin.

“You have to remember, Master. Please. Please remember me.”

Anakin shrunk back away from the curled line of beads in her palm as if it were a sand viper, and she fought back the insane urge to laugh, to laugh at the madness of all of this.

That her masters had lived in body and died in spirit and she had thought a meaningless piece of jewelry would be able to bring them back.

That she had lived and fought on and survived impossible odds but here she was, easy pickings for death, a stupid foolish woman who had thought her devotion to her masters would be enough to undo the years of horrors they had been subjected to, the ones that crept along her conscious mind from their mangled bond and dared her to look directly at them.

And just as she was about to sink to her knees, unable to hold the wild howl of her pain back any longer, Master Obi-Wan spoke, nervous and slowly as if he never had before in his life. “Ahsoka Tano,” he said.

Anakin sat up in wary fascination at the name and nodded a reluctant agreement, still refusing to take the beads from her outstretched hand.

“Yes,” came the hoarse gasp. “Yes. It’s me, Masters,” she managed through the dark, swirling haze of the Force around them that made her sick to her stomach. “I’m here. I’m here.”

She came to sink down onto the bed, beads hurting her palm as she clenched her fist tighter around them and tension heavy in the air as Anakin brought his metal hand up to touch her cheek while Obi-Wan ran his along her shoulder. They glanced at each other and then her as if considering something wholly new and novel, and she held her breath as they silently touched her face and her arms and then prodded at the hidden bulk of her sabers curiously.

“You have lightsabers,” Anakin pointed out, voice so faint and unlike himself Ahsoka had to swallow back tears before she answered him.

“I was your padawan, Sky-Skyguy. Remember? You taught me. You were Jedi. Both of you. You’re Anakin Skywalker, Master! And you’re Obi-Wan Kenobi!”

It was as if she’d suddenly stepped off a cliff, falling, falling through shards of ice as the Force crystallized around them, sharp and deadly.

Ahsoka had once nearly died on the battlefield, watching a Separatist rocket sail down toward her position from a ruddy sky, only dumb luck sending an exploding enemy ship into it to knock it off course just in time before it landed on her and her men.

Helpless to stop it, she had watched that rocket come in, felt her short life expand in a hundred memories and sensations before her mind’s eye as she watched it arc downward in a halo of fire and metal and felt a strange sense of calm spread through her as it did.

She hadn’t wanted to die, but in the monstrous truth of that moment she had accepted her death would come, and had been shocked when the tumbling debris of the enemy ship had saved her.

That same unearthly calm came to her now as both of them stood up through the burning cold of the Force and their sabers flew to their hands from across the room.

She closed her eyes as red shot to life above them.

But the blow never came. There was only silence and the hiss of the saber dry and harsh in her ear, and what felt like an eternity later the distinctive sigh of two sabers powering down.

She was still alive.

Just like on that battlefield.

Had they remembered her? Would that be what saved her this time?

 _It has to be!_ She opened her eyes to find the two of them staring at her, sabers down at their sides and faces turned toward each other, having some sort of unspoken argument she couldn’t hear the slightest hint of behind the wall of uneasy energy that swirled around them.  

“Masters,” she said so faintly it was more breath than word, but they both tilted their heads to look at her in an uncannily precise mirror of the other. “It’s all right. I came here to rescue you. To free you.”

Silent frowns greeted this.

She thought about grabbing their arms and dragging them toward the door, but her instincts told her that might break the fragile peace they had. “Can you sneak out tonight? I can bring a shuttle by. That’s what I thought we would do.”

Anakin’s frown deepened and Obi-Wan leaned forward to press his head against Anakin’s, more unspoken words flowing between them.

Ahsoka darted her eyes back and forth between them, trying to read this new body language of theirs, so unlike what it had been before. They were like reflections of the other now, and she couldn’t tell if they were frightened or angry or relieved. “Listen, please. Can’t you leave tonight? Or while you’re here on this planet?”

  
“No,” Anakin said, Obi-Wan shaking his head, those unnerving yellow eyes hard on her. “No,” he repeated.

“Listen,” she said, reaching out despite the tremble in her hands to take Anakin’s in hers, pressing her beads into his palm and closing his unresponsive fingers over them. “This is a promise, Master. I will help you escape.”

“There is no escape,” Obi-Wan said in the same dead, flat voice that made her skin crawl. “Not from this place. Not ever.”

“Yes, there is,” she growled angrily, tears in her eyes as a new idea came to her, one that was just desperate enough to be worthy of their old battlefield miracles. “Listen. I… I’m going to be on Varen IV’s moon for the next year. Do you remember the old Jedi temple there, Master Obi-Wan? The abandoned one you took me to once?”

His grip tightened so hard on his unlit saber his knuckles turned white, but he finally nodded. “I remember that place.”

“Whenever you have a chance, any chance, go there. I’ll be there. You can ditch your ship and come with me in mine and they’ll never be able to find you,” she whispered, desperate to get this out as fast as she could because something else had changed in the Force over the din of their pain: a faint wisp of light, an anxious presence, was coming their way down the hall outside.

_Rex._

_He can’t know about this._

“You’ll be there?” Anakin asked so quietly she almost didn’t realize he was speaking, his unsettling yellow eyes searching her face.

“Yes,” she said, risking a quick touch of his cheek. He allowed it, but did not lean into it and she felt that black abyss of an urge to destroy threaten to overwhelm her once again. Forcing herself up, hand falling away from his cool skin, she took one step back and then another. “Please, Masters. Come find me.”

“We will,” they both said at the same time, unblinking gazes never leaving her.

There was a sharp rap on the door and then it opened, Rex thrusting his head inside and the helmet he wore pale like a skull in the dimness. “Let’s go,” he hissed with obvious mistrust in his voice as he glared past her, hand resting on his pistol as he took in the silent Twins watching them from the other side of the room, their silhouettes wreathed in the delicate filigree work of the window shutters and rays of light filtering in.

Ahsoka opened her mouth to protest but he cut her off with a hard sweep of his hand toward the door. _Retreat_ , it said. “We got a comm in our headsets that Palpatine wants this wing searched. Appo is coming to prep the Twins, whatever that means, and wants everyone cleared out of here. I stalled the guard at the door and knocked out the one right here. Drag him into that room at the end of the hall on your way to the stairs and I’ll cover these two. Go!”

She gave a grim nod and slipped out past them with a final look back as she grabbed her hat from the bench by the door.

Rex hated the pain that shone raw and wild in her eyes almost as much as he hated himself in that moment.

 _Just a second is all I need_ , he told himself harshly as she passed him, the moment afterward unbearable and eternal as he drew his pistol in what felt like slow motion and took aim at the man who had once been Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Kenobi and Skywalker looked back at him in stunned surprise at one of the clones drawing a weapon on them.

Rex felt the weight of the blaster in his hand, familiar as breathing to him but suddenly so heavy he could barely keep it level. _No. It’s not him. He isn’t General Kenobi anymore. That man is gone. It’s not him anymore!_

But there was no hood here to hide his achingly familiar face and Kenobi stared in dazed bewilderment at him, even his oddly-colored eyes not enough to change that expression enough Rex didn’t recognize it from a dozen medbay gurneys after Kenobi had come out of a bacta tank.

“Captain Rex,” the man that had once been Anakin Skywalker murmured in an unreadable monotone as he shifted to sit in front of the other and block Rex’s shot. “I knew you.” The words hung, empty and stilted, in the dark between them. “Why did you try to shoot me?”

_I’m still alive. I’m still alive because they’re curious about me._

_If they’re curious they’re starting to remember._

Rex’s hand shook, and he slid his finger down to the trigger. _No! They’re gone! Just do it!_ he screamed at himself. _Mercy killing. Alei da’han!_

They watched him, motionless, like ancient statues left askew in the ruins of his life: the men he’d fought with and bled with and laughed with for all of those years, the men who had saved him and as many of his brothers as they could even when the Council and the Senate had made clear their clones were entirely expendable.

Rex growled and jerked back out into the hallway, slapping the door control to shut it and blasting the panel to lock it closed. He ran to pound on the door of the room Ahsoka was busy tying up the other guard in and they hurried off out and down a different stairwell.

Rex was convinced a red saber would thrust itself through the door and the Twins would come floating out after them with the same unstoppable and terrifying grace he’d glimpsed in that base all those months ago, but nothing happened. The door stayed shut and silent as they fled, only wisps of smoke trailing up toward the painted birds dancing along the ceiling.

When it was finally opened an hour later, a furious Appo stalking through to demand to know what had happened and where the guard was he had left in charge of them, he was greeted by the strange twin echo of their voices saying a handful of words that it took him several long, stunned moments to fully process despite their simplicity.

“Commander, we know where to find a Jedi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Yeah. This is going to go well, right?
> 
>  
> 
> And thanks as always for your comments and support! <3 I'm going to try to catch up on them over the weekend. I'll update in the usual two weeks-ish, give or take a few days. Thanks for reading!


	7. Haven

Koh sat cross-legged on their bed, the lights in the room dimmed for sleep and the datapad for their mission the following day sitting forgotten off to the side as he stared out the long window that ran along their bedroom. Outside lay the swirl of yellow and green and blue that was Varen IV, Koh a black shadow silhouetted and still against its rich colors.

He was dressed for bed, wearing only loose, grey pants, the scars on his back and chest mercifully softened by the lush, reflected light from the planet below. Sen sat down next to him with a creak of the bed, dressed the same, his own pale skin and scars given a warm glow, and twined his fingers in Koh’s. _Are you sure you want to do this?_ he whispered across their bond, leaning his head on Koh’s shoulder and closing his eyes. _I’m afraid._

_I am too. But the girl called us other names._

_I know. I know those names. I’ve… I’ve thought of them before._

They both paused, their hands twining tighter together as Koh lifted the beads in his other hand, the click of them gentle against the metal of his fingers. Neither articulated through speech or thought what frightened them: Sen and Koh were one. This Skywalker and Kenobi had been two.

They had to be. Only Sen and Koh could be one. Only Sen and Koh could survive what they had lived through.

But there was something about the young Togruta woman that had stilled them in that dim chamber a month prior, that had drawn them to her, and they as one reluctantly studied the colorful string of beads hanging from Koh’s hand, turning back and forth in the soft light of Varen IV.

“Kenobi and Skywalker,” they murmured together, both afraid as children lost in a dark wood calling out into the shadows, unsure of what waited for them.

There was nothing for a long while, only the silent, tectonic shift of the command ship easing into its final orbit, distant sounds of machinery and men mingling with the hiss of the room’s climate control. Sen felt the warmth of his hand reflected through Koh, and Koh felt Sen’s steady breathing in his own chest.

They repeated the names once and then again, sinking into each other as they always did during battle or sex in an attempt to prepare themselves for whatever was coming as the minutes stretched out and the planet spun slowly and silently past their window.

A sound crept into their minds, a gentle rush of flowing water, and they focused on it until it resolved into an image of a fountain in a garden of some kind. The scene was imperfect, scattered, and it took long minutes to chase down the individual impressions of the place to piece it all together: fat green leaves waving in a breeze, flowers bobbing bright and red, the sound of children reciting something as if in a class. _There is no emotion, there is peace_ , their little voices chirped, high and pure, and Sen frowned at the same time Koh did.

Some of their Jedi targets had said that in their last moments, a few making it to another line but none further than that.

Curious, they strained to hear the rest but the person in this vision-- _memory?--_ was moving away, into a cool, quiet hallway lined with tall windows. There was the feel of a robe and the weight of a saber on this young man’s hip, now that they thought about it: none of these things were unfamiliar to them, but the feeling of innocent excitement was.

Someone was coming back. Someone had been away. But they were returning, and his pace quickened as he walked onward through the airy corridor.

Sen clutched Koh’s hand tighter and Koh squeezed back as another sensation came into focus: this man’s arm was heavier on the right than the left.

 _It’s me/you_ , they thought as one stunned mind, understanding in their own echoed way they meant Koh.

There was no time to wonder at this strange, foreign apparition, of a Koh bright and happy as the sunlight spilling across the floor, because the memory took him around a corner into a larger hall.

And there was Sen.

A blue-eyed Sen, robed in brown, smiling and bowing to a few others wearing the same light, layered colors.

The two men sat perfectly motionless in the spartan bedroom, breath caught in their throats and seeing nothing but the memory now as the Sen-- _Kenobi, your/my name was Kenobi--_ turned and gave a small smile and a bow. His oddly blue eyes gave away far more happiness than the short greeting he limited himself to. “Padawan. Hello!”

“Master,” the young man answered with a smile widening on his face. _Skywalker. Anakin Skywalker._ “You’re back.”

They didn’t need Sen’s face or the sound of Koh’s voice to understand the truth of this memory: the connection between the two, the way their minds touched in that familiar, loving way was them. It was the peace Sen and Koh struggled so hard to reach together in the blinding chaos of a fight or rough sex, here in abundance as if it were the simplest thing in the world to find.

Through a smile.

A greeting.

Tears streamed down both of their faces, Koh letting out a soft gasp. _More. I want to see more of them_ , he thought, shoving his mind against Sen’s, and Sen couldn’t help but fall with him down through more sensations that branched off and raced out from that first memory. There was still a distance to them, like watching a holo of strangers, but the images came anyway, rolling through their minds in confused jumbles of sight and sound and feelings.

Kenobi watching Skywalker standing with his arms out, laughing in the rain somewhere as a ship spiraled down toward them and a clone trooper in the blue of the 501st slapped him on the back.

Skywalker tossing a ration bar to Kenobi, his own hanging from his mouth as he worked on some engine part. He got a small chuckle out of Kenobi as he mumbled around the bar a deadpan apology that he thought the ration bar was the rubber part he was replacing.

The girl, Ahsoka Tano, hugging Skywalker tightly and then Kenobi, lecturing them about something to do with crashing a ship as relief spread through all three of them. _She was their Padawan. Skywalker’s, they said. But both of theirs._

Time rushed along in little scattered glimpses, the braid Skywalker had worn in the first memory gone and his hair growing longer as he grew taller. Kenobi grew older too, settling into the beard that had looked a little out of place on him at first. Time passed and, lost in wonder at the hundred little memories that flitted past them like fireflies, Sen and Koh were unprepared for the sudden, deafening hiss of a bolt that exploded across their minds.

Kenobi and Skywalker were on a misty, barren world, face down in the dirt, both of them staring across the ground at each other and the memory echoed as they watched each other writhe from the stun bolts they had been hit with.

White boots stood all around them, the boots of their clones, the men they trusted, their leader speaking in a monotone to a cloaked form. _No, no nonononono_ , Sen and Koh silently howled as one, recoiling away, but it was too late.

Other memories came rushing to them on swift, merciless wings, unforgiving and brutally clear.

The white rooms.

Pain, so much of it there was nothing but it, the world drowning in it, the two of them drowning in it.

Kenobi lying bloodied and unconscious on a glinting metal table, chest barely rising and falling.

Skywalker bruised and naked, weeping as he curled in on himself on a cracked duracrete floor.

Darkness.

The memories came faster and faster, pulling them down into a black, bottomless ocean, sucking the air out of their lungs in horror as they relived agony after agony, as Kenobi wavered into Sen and Skywalker faded into Koh until one awful memory rose harsh and blinding above all the others: a broken, anguished howl of surrender, of defeat, so inhuman it was impossible to tell which one of them it was.

 _NO!_ In the silence of their quarters, Sen and Koh shoved back away from each other, breaking the flow of memory between them, falling roughly off the bed and shoving themselves to huddle against the wall on opposite sides of the room.

Panting, breath ragged and tears bright in their eyes, their consciousness swirled back together in a clumsy reach for the other and as one they began to repeat the same words in shaky, hoarse whispers.

“Sen and Koh, ‘the elder brother’ and ‘the younger brother’, the long and short swords worn by kings in ancient times on Korriban. Like all weapons, the long and short swords serve their master as their master wills. Weapons have no fear. Weapons have no mind. They exist only to serve.”

Slowly crawling across the floor toward the bed and back onto it, they reached out with shaking hands and pulled each other close as they chanted, sitting in a tight huddle and tears warm against the other’s cheek.

“We serve. We serve. We serve,” they ended in trembling voices and immediately began again.

With every repetition of the mantra, the names Kenobi and Skywalker and the horrific pain they brought with them receded a little more into merciful blackness. There was only Sen and Koh. There would only be Sen and Koh. That was all that could be allowed.

Sen and Koh would find the girl. They would find her. And Master would take her.

And Sen and Koh would be at peace once again.

 

* * *

 

The part of Varen IV’s moon Commander Appo and team had landed on was a rocky, sparse line of hills dotted with scrub and not much else, nothing but endless undulations of stone and hardy, stubborn plants common to a warm, arid environment.

Off in one direction the land flattened out into plains, the native grasses waves of silver and soft gold, and in the other the hills tumbled into their taller brothers, mountains rising up sharp and jagged along the horizon.

It had been a long day already even though it was only noon, but Appo was feeling good. It was pleasantly warm and clear here and things were going well, the march through the hills simple enough.

They had landed before dawn in a scout ship chosen for its relative silence compared to a gunship, touching down a good hike away from the place Sen had indicated on a map so as not to give away their presence to Tano.

Before that, aboard the command ship, there had been the briefing with the Twins: Tano, who neither seemed to recall in the slightest, was to be captured. Alive, unhurt in any permanent fashion as per the Emperor’s orders. The Twins, who had been practicing this objective with growing success on would-be assassins and others sent against the Emperor, had accepted these orders with the same impassive calm they always did.

And before that, so early in the morning most of them were fighting back yawns, had been another briefing, a secret one for the two squads that would be accompanying Appo and the Twins.

_He looked around the room at the twenty men, stifling a yawn himself and keeping his face carefully blank so as not to give away his excitement at the thought of this monotonous detail finally ending. “Gentlemen, for a variety of reasons His Majesty has determined that the Twins have outlived their usefulness. Upon capture of the target Ahsoka Tano and safe delivery of her to us, they are to be terminated. I will give the signal at the appropriate time.”_

_A low mutter ran through the room, a mix of excitement, fear, and surprise. None of the brothers or the few humans mixed in were fond of the bizarre Twins, but everyone save the shinies had seen them fight or at least the aftermath of their fighting. “So we’re just going to shoot them down where they stand, sir?” one brother asked, folding his arms and doing his best to keep his voice respectful. There was no disapproval of the method stated, just worry it might not be that easy._

_“Yes,” Appo nodded, waving away his concern. “They have no reason to believe we are any danger to them. By the time they do, it will be too late. Unless you mean to tell me twenty of you can’t aim well enough to take out two humans at close range.”_

_“And there are no rules, sir?” another brother asked as the adiik shinies shifted a little at the stress on ‘humans’. “When you give the order, fire at will until they go and stay down, sir?”_

_“Yes,” Appo nodded. “No mercy.”_

Now, as they walked in the bright white daylight of the system’s yellow sun, Appo was thankful for the long march up and down through the hills. Any anxiety or tension that had shown in the men’s shoulders and faces when they had first assembled with the Twins for the mission had faded into quiet boredom as they hiked along in quiet clumps of boots through grass.

The Twins were in the lead, and had been since they had gotten to the edge of a large, grey-blue lake late in the morning. Winding their way along the shore, through large, cracked boulders and twisted scrub trees that faded into barren, coarse sand at the water’s edge, the Twins were silent, black-clad shadows harsh against the pale landscape.

 _Plenty of places to hide out and wait_ , Appo thought to himself as the first hints of the ruins they were heading toward drifted into view as they made their way up to the crest of another hill. It looked to be a palace of some kind, or maybe a shrine, long rows of broken columns stretched along the water’s edge in what was probably a formal set of hallways long ago when the structure had still borne a roof out that far.

As it stood now, it seemed only the main building still had a roof, the circular structure large and squat at the center of the crumbling walls and columns. _She must be staying in there_ , Appo thought. _Stupid girl._

He still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened back on that strange day several planets ago, but security footage and the brothers on detail had confirmed that a Togruta had made her way inside to see the Twins and before she had left told them her name and where she would be.

 _It would have been better to put a bolt in them when you had the chance, little one_ , Appo smiled to himself, shaking his head condescendingly. _Dooku and his idiotic taunting aside, they remember nothing. And if they didn’t remember you after coming face to face with you, they never will._

“Men, halt,” he called out, waving for them to gather around. The Twins turned as one and rejoined them, hooded and silent, as the soldiers listened. “We will spend the next hour spreading out and encircling the ruins to cut off any attempts at escape by the target. On my signal you will engage the target, Sen and Koh. What are your orders?”

“Alive and without permanent harm,” they answered softly.

“Yes. Remember,” Appo said, looking at the Twins but his tone meant for his men, “Do not act until I signal.”  

 

* * *

 

Ahsoka had woken early that day with a nervous energy she couldn’t explain, a tension tight in her shoulders and throat that didn’t make any sense.

It had been two weeks since Rex had dropped her off with a small scout ship tucked away in a cave near the old temple and a fierce hug and bittersweet smile. She had hugged him and the other brothers as hard as she could a dozen times before they had finally climbed aboard their own ship and taken off with promises to check back on her in a few months.

The days had passed quietly, the weather pleasant and the soothing hum of the Force in the temple smoothing out the rough edges of the worst of her emotions as she had hoped it would. But Ahsoka was still worried about Rex and the others, and she was still anxious thinking about her old masters and the fact she had kept her plans secret from Rex.

 _But I had to. I had to do it._ It hurt to remember them, so strange and adrift in the Force as they lay together in that dark room she had seen them in. But they were coming. She was sure of it. It might take a long time, but she could wait.

This particular morning she had dragged herself from her little cot in what had once been a training hall, chosen for its high ceilings that held cool air on warm afternoons and a fireplace set in one wall to keep the chill away at night, and run through her usual warm ups and drills to get her blood moving.

Then it had been a simple breakfast of dried fruits and cooked meat left over from the night before, and then onto her project of the week. This week Ahsoka was sketching each of the statues out in the forest of columns that ringed the temple in complex arrangements. Some of them she recognized, famous Knights and Masters from ancient times, and others were mysteries to her, their carved faces too worn or simply unfamiliar to her.

She had gathered up her old, beat-up sketchbook and a charcoal stick, tucking her lightsabers into place on her hips out of habit, and gone out to find her way through the ruins to her latest statue. It was a man, a Twi’lek, and there was something intriguing about his sad face that had made her put him in the top five she wanted to sketch before the others. He faced a large clearing in the columns, an artificial meadow, and she wondered if back in the day this had been an open plaza of some sort between buildings. _I could dig down a bit later and see if there are tiles?_

Happy for now to have soft grass to sit on, she tried to put away her feelings of unease as she sat down cross-legged before him, looking up into his unblinking face and the sunlight that lay golden on it.

There was silence, and peace, and then a sound drifted through the columns to her, just audible over the wisp of a breeze coming off the nearby lake.

Footsteps.

Ahsoka stood without thinking, reaching out with the Force instinctively and heart pounding as her mind met the distinctive, unsettling tangle of energy she had felt only once before over a month ago.

_Masters!_

There was no time to consider the fact their fused, unnatural signature had not changed at all since that strange meeting before they came around the corner of one tumbledown wall like shades from a tomb. Both hooded and silent, both with unlit sabers in their hands, the sun unable to pierce the shadows beneath their cowls.

They stopped across the clearing from her, robes swirling around them before coming to rest.

“Masters?” she said with a hesitant smile, forcing her hands away from her sabers. _I can’t startle them. I have to move slowly._ “You escaped!” she added when they said nothing, hope and fear crushing any further words out of her. _Say something. Please!_

“Ahsoka Tano,” Master Obi-Wan said, voice as empty as the eyes of the statue looking down on them, “You are under arrest by order of His Majesty.”

The words hit so hard she took a step back, boot coming down to snap her charcoal stick forgotten in the grass. “No,” she whispered, fear obliterating the hope inside her in a violent flash of despair. “No.”

“Come with us,” Anakin said in that same hollow way, that same unreadable tone they had promised to find her with as they folded their hoods back to reveal those unnerving golden eyes.

“Come with us,” Master Obi-Wan repeated.

“No. No…”

They seemed to consider this and lit their sabers as one, twin lines of red blooming to life beside them.

 _They are his. They are the Emperor’s._ Ahsoka covered her mouth and tried to hold back a gasping sob. _My Masters. You’re gone. You’re gone and you’re never coming back._

The two men said nothing, watching her with the aloof gaze of predators waiting for their prey to run, the dry hiss of their sabers loud against the crumbled walls and columns around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters to go before this angst-fest is over! (Good lord, this has been harder to write than I thought it would be.) 
> 
> So what do you think? What's going to happen? What are you hoping will or will not happen? Please also remember that this WILL NOT have a happy ending, as I've said several times before.
> 
> And thank you as usual for all of your support! <3 <3 <3


	8. Epiphany

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than my usual ones, but I felt it ends at the perfect stopping point before the final chapter. Thank you for reading!

Koh’s hand tightened on his saber as he looked at the girl and tried to focus on the mission at hand. _Target. Target. She is a target. Alive. No permanent harm_ , he told himself, but there was a strange energy in the air that felt like white noise in his head. It had been growing in his mind since they had reached the lake, creeping up through his thoughts like water rising. _What is this place?_

 _Temple. This was a Jedi temple_ , Sen answered without looking away from the Togruta, his own unease lacing his response. _Kenobi came here once with her._

That was safe to say, they both wordlessly decided as they watched her stare at them with tears in her eyes. Kenobi was a different person. The weak one. Not Sen. Sen was strong.

Sen had lived through what Kenobi could not.

 _Will she run?_ Koh wondered, not feeling any of the usual excitement he did when confronting the challenge and danger of live, moving targets. There was only the noise in his head and a deep, hollow pit growing in his stomach.

 _Left side_ , Sen answered in images more than words, conveying the idea that Koh would surprise her and Sen would knock her out. _Remember, no permanent harm._

_No permanent harm._

The three stood motionless, waiting, the shadow of a cloud drifting past in a slow sweep of shade and then light once again. The statue towering over them stood as it had for centuries, seeing everything and nothing, as Ahsoka darted her gaze between them, unclenching her fists with obvious effort.

 _Now!_ Sen shouted across the bond.

Koh leapt forward in an attempt to startle the girl, saber arcing high over his head in a red that almost vanished against the bright sky.

Sen darted to the side, throwing one of the many rocks that littered the ground at her head with a violent snap of the Force.

She whirled, moving as fast as they did, lighting her sabers into a yellow-green wash of light as she deflected Koh’s purposefully weak attack with her shorter blade and sliced Sen’s projectile in half with the other.

It fell past them in two glowing embers to thump and roll along the ground.

Sen shot in to attack as Koh danced back to give him space and almost sliced her leg off on the way out of habit before his orders echoed hard and firm in his mind. As she leaped to the side, what would have been a moment too late, Koh clumsily dropped his blade to arc in bitter black ash through the soft grass beneath them.

 _Hit too low, hit too high, first to miss is first to die,_ an old children’s rhyme-- _no, that’s not the right word… initiate?--_ sounded in Koh’s mind as he skidded back to safety, barely out of the reach of her own awkward attempt to wound him rather than kill him. His mind shivered, an indescribable cold passing through his body as he turned his boot in the dirt, steadying himself for a jump back into the fight.

Koh knew it was impossible, but it sounded like there were children singing it right there, right on top of them, their voices loud and cheerful as they teased each other during a game punctuated by snaps of wooden staffs bouncing off each other. He glanced around for the briefest of moments to reassure himself that this, no matter how impossible he knew it to be, was not actually happening.

_It’s a memory. Skywalker’s._

Grinding his teeth, Koh brought his blade back up and his attention back to the fighting, forcing the voices of the children down and away as he reached out to twine his mind with Sen’s even tighter.

 _She’s trying to escape. Keep behind her, hem her in. But don’t attack_ , Sen thought ruthlessly between one heartbeat and the next as he returned her hard, furious blows with bone-rattling ones of his own, trying to wear her down as he searched for a fool-proof opening that would guarantee injury and not death.

But their target refused to stay still, weaving and bending, fighting her way in hard-earned step after step toward one of the rows of columns and the faint suggestion of a path worn into the grass there.

Sen swept his blade wide in a series of loud, clashing attacks, hammering at her and attempting to knock her saber aside so he could land a kick in her chest or face.

Koh stalked along the back side of her, well out of reach, but the fight was too evenly matched and he couldn’t risk a kick or punch without possibly hitting Sen. This style of restrained fighting together was awkward for them, one usually more than enough to handle a single target designated for neutralization or even disarming.

_But she meets his saber with her own every time, like me. Like she’s fought him before._

The white noise in his head cleared in a sudden wave of ice through Koh, a memory sweeping in over the swirling light and low thrum of the saber duel in front of him far more completely than the children’s rhyme had.

 _“Come on, one more time?” the girl asked._ No, Ahsoka. Ahsoka was her name. _Ahsoka smiled up from the duracrete of a landing pad at Sen. At Kenobi. Kenobi laughed and held his hand out, helping her up._

_“How many times are you going to fight me today?”_

_“Well, until I beat you or until our ship gets here to pick us up.”_

_“Like Master, like Padawan, hmm?” Kenobi said with a fond nod over at Skywalker._

_At me._

Koh remembered shrugging, remembered giving a proud smile. The warmth that flowed into him from the memory, from the white noise that was now a halo around his mind rather than obscuring it, froze him in place.

_No. I am not Skywalker!_

“Koh!” Sen shouted, and Koh stumbled back, the columns looming over him and the noon sun hot and bright in the sky overhead. The fight had drifted into the lane she had been retreating toward, and with an anguished cry and swell in the Force the girl knocked Sen into a wall and spun on her heel to run and veer away into the forest of stone.

Koh ran to Sen, who was already rising back to his feet. He angrily powered his saber down just long enough to shrug his robe off, Koh mirroring his actions, before the two jogged off into the rows of columns. This target would take more effort than usual.

Koh caught Sen by the arm as they ran, the girl’s form slipping in and out of view well ahead of them. _It’s different here_ , he said with a worried frown over his shoulder at him. _It’s not quiet here._

Sen knew what he meant from the rattled, unhappy feeling that returned to Koh across their strange, melded bond. _I keep seeing things. The past_ , Sen answered as they fought to close the distance.

_Me too._

One of them snarled, the frustration bright and sharp in both as they realized where the girl was going. The ruins of the temple. The source of the white noise.

 _We have to stop her before she goes in there!_ Koh hissed, drawing deeper breaths as they ran, sabers swinging beside them in steady, hissing arcs of crimson. _  
_

_We can’t. She’s too fast._

_I don’t want to go in._  

 _I don’t either_ , Sen admitted, hating how much the building scared them both. Their fear seeped bitter and rancid through their bond, pooling down inside them where deeper traumas lay.

After a moment, from both at the same time when they realized what price failure might come at: _Orders are orders._ Their shared voice was not the hard, beautiful emptiness of their earlier missions, of their strong mental chorus up until they had seen the clone who called himself Rex, but it held together enough. It would have to be enough. 

 _We serve_ , Sen growled, willing it to be true.

 _We serve_ , Koh echoed, the same angry, desperate fear in his response.

“Report,” their comms sputtered in a brief burst of static, and Koh held his up as they ran.

“Target entering main building.”

“Pursue and flush out target. Scout said there’s only the one entrance for the main building.”

“Yes, Commander.”

 

* * *

 

When they strode up the old, worn steps sweeping toward the tumbledown ruins of the temple, the only sound to greet them was the rasp of their footsteps and the faint rustle of the scrub brush that had taken root in cracked walls and drifts of dirt that had built up against the structure, barely audible over the thrum of their lightsabers.

Koh took a deep breath at the same time Sen did, both of them struggling against the ceaseless, directionless power hanging heavy all around them like the meaningless hum of background radiation heard in the gap between interstellar com channels.

By the time they reached the grand arch, simple and elegant despite its disrepair, and stepped through it into the shadowy, cavernous main chamber beyond, more unwanted memories were fighting for attention. It was a challenge to keep moving, to keep their sabers up in defensive lines across them, but they kept moving.

_Ships._

_A temple, bright and clean._

_The desert. Two suns._

_A library._

The fragments ricocheted across the bond from one to the other and back again, only the viewpoint of the recollection allowing them to understand whose it was originally. A dozen came and went in a scattering of confused sensations until one finally emerged whole enough to follow.

 _I am standing with clones, on the bridge of a destroyer. None of them command me. I command them. They are like my brothers_ , Sen felt in near horror at the emotions that came with it--pride, affection, confidence. All alien to Sen, all too risky to give into lest their Master sensed them and used them against the two. _One of the clones, a commander, and I are talking with Koh through a holo. Koh is injured but he has won the campaign he is on. He is injured and I am a little worried, but I know he will be all right. He always is._

Risking a moment to scrub at his eyes and the wetness he felt there at the unfathomable idea that he would ever consider Koh safe from harm, Sen clenched his jaw and moved to the left as Koh took the right. The room was circular with a simple altar of sorts in the middle. It was a raised circular dais, just a hand’s width off the ground, with an ancient rendering of the sun and its rays painted there, the design long faded by the noon light spilling down in a fall.

The circle of daylight cast a warm, reflected glow around the rest of the darkened room and the columns that rose in here as well, the chamber no less crowded with them than the grounds outside. Koh stalked in silence along the wall, passing in and out of the indirect, reflected light from the dais and back into shadow, listening as carefully as he could through his own jumbled haze of memories rising up like the dust motes in the air around him.

_I am lying in bed, laughing with a woman. The pillows are soft and she is soft and she is one of my best friends and she is teasing me about my Padawan braid as I pull my pants back on. I toss a pillow back at her and she falls back, flopping against the mattress in exaggerated defeat. She is too small to make much of a wave and I tease her about that. She throws another pillow at me that I have to dodge on my way to the refresher._

Koh gripped his saber tighter, willing himself to see only the columns in front of him, furious with the memory and himself for the sudden spark of hurt from Sen across the room as the images passed through their bond.

It seemed Skywalker had never told Kenobi about her, and Koh began to send his frantic apologies when the hurt vanished in the warm dawn of a new memory triggered by the last one, a shared one so powerful it came to them as a single recollection.

_They are on a battlefield, Skywalker’s braid swinging as he whirls and deflects bolt after bolt with his saber, Kenobi backed up against him doing the same. They are drawing enemy fire so their men can escape, their bond singing clear and lovely like Koh and Sen’s never has, beautiful and balanced in the space between the twin lights of two distinct, unique minds. The brave, impulsive Padawan and the clever, precise Master._

_It is the closest their souls have ever been, pushed there in this moment beyond almost all conscious thought, and there are no words, only an emotion beyond simple love for each other, as an air assault rains down upon them and they think, in the perfect emptiness of their battle trance, that at least they will die together. Skywalker smiles up into the keening cry of the bombs as Kenobi closes his eyes, their free hands slipping back to twine together before the blinding pain knocks them off of their feet and obliterates all conscious thought._  

Sen blinked and realized he had shuffled to a stop over on his side of the room, his steps faltering into an awkward lean against the cool stone of the wall, and felt Koh doing the same across the way.

 _Was that when you knew you were in love with him?_ Sen managed to think, barely able to put the ideas together for all of the emotions hammering against his soul. _Was that when you knew you loved me… Anakin?_

The other man let out a choked gasp across the way, the whimper almost lost in the columns between them. _Obi-Wan…_ he sent back, anguish rendering the thought so powerful it barely kept its shape.

But before either of them could say anything more, remember anything more, there was a blur of movement between them: the girl seeing her chance at their hesitation. She ran for the entrance, feet pounding across dusty stone, footfalls loud and harsh against the lofty chamber’s ceiling.

“No!” they both cried, darting after her.

“Wait!” Anakin shouted, but it was too late. He watched her vanish out into the bright daylight and flee down the steps, right into a stun bolt fired by one of Appo’s men.

She spun crazily in place, momentum carrying her another few steps, and then dropped in an awkward thud against the dry ground of the courtyard.

Anakin and Obi-Wan stood motionless in the entryway, sabers twitching lines of red at their side, and looked down to take in the ring of clones half-hidden behind the columns that ranged around the courtyard. Commander Appo was easy to spot, kneeling off to their left.

“Is she alive?” Appo barked at the clone who had shot Ahsoka and had crept out to kneel over her.

“Yes, sir,” the man answered, but Obi-Wan’s eyes were not on Ahsoka or the clone as he began to drag her away toward cover. They were on the human soldier to their right, a new recruit obvious in the way he held his gun and huddled against a column compared to the easy, deadly grace of the battle-hardened clones.

His hands shook on his weapon, and Obi-Wan understood, through his own pain at fighting through the hardened ice of Sen’s thought processes, the cold logic of what that meant.

Ahsoka, the target, was out of commission but this boy was still deathly afraid, his thoughts almost louder than the noise of the temple around them. _I can’t miss when we shoot. I can’t miss when we shoot or they’ll kill us!_

Obi-Wan grabbed Anakin’s shoulder. _Back!_ he shouted across their bond as Appo bellowed “Fire!”.

They dove back into the temple and rolled out of the way just as blaster fire peppered the archway and sang through it to sear black rings into the far wall. The bolts knocked acrid puffs of smoke up to dance in the lone cascade of light at the center of the room, and the building reverberated with the whine of fire and the rough scrape of at least a dozen men pounding up the steps toward them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there... one chapter to go! Thank y'all so much for reading and for your kudos and comments, which I do read excitedly and love seeing but haven't had the chance to answer lately. But I will this week, I'm hoping!
> 
> Also, if you're wondering, that final shared memory of a battle is referencing the incident Padme thinks about back in Chapter 3: "She had started to just entertain the idea of one day possibly, maybe marrying him, and then he had returned so different from before: bandaged, limping, his braid gone and his title now Knight instead of Padawan. Something horrible had happened, a mission gone wrong. He was the lucky one, he had told her with a sad smile. His master was with the healers in the Temple, vanished into a tank of bacta for a month or more."


	9. Peace/Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the end of this dark little story, which I have spent the last four and a half months planning and writing after the initial 100-word drabble over on Tumblr was such a hit and y'all requested more. 
> 
> This will be the third long piece I have ever finished, and I'm learning it's hard to put stories and characters to bed after you spend so much time with them rattling around in your brain. But I think Sen and Koh have earned their rest, and while I am sad to see their story end I am thankful for the help it gave me in coping with a stressful time earlier this year. 
> 
> Thank y'all so much for all of your support with this story. It's the darkest fic I have written to date, and it's been a hard one to write at times, but I hope you have found it as cathartic to read as I did to create. Thank you for reading.

Anakin’s heart thundered in his chest, too many sensations and images flooding through him all at once: the cascade of blaster fire currently shooting past him through the temple entrance, the sharp curves of four moons rising over a distant world he led his first campaign on, his mother’s smiling face caught in a ruddy sunset.

But even as the ancient energy of the temple sank into him, the fragments starting to align into whole thoughts and memories, a simple, urgent fact fought its way through the recollections just beginning to take shape.

The men charging up the steps were coming to kill him.

And Obi-Wan.

Anakin snarled, throwing himself out into the line of fire just as the first troopers made it to the top of the steps.

In an elegant whirling dive he beheaded the one closest and swept his blade along the chest of another, ducking just in time to miss the vicious arc of Obi-Wan’s saber slicing through a third man on the other side. He and Obi-Wan danced past each other with their blades spinning so fast it seemed impossible they didn’t hit each other, but their bond was unreal, so strong Anakin felt like every step Obi-Wan took was one he had thought of himself first.

Questions struggled to find purchase in his mind, but all of them slipped away in the gory chaos of the fight. There was only strike and dodge, deflect and feint across the wide landing at the top of the worn temple steps that lay half in light and half in shadow, his blade sinking into another clone trooper with ruthless precision.

Anakin kicked another down the steps, without looking whipping his blade where the Force sang brightest, sending three more shots back in the direction of the soldiers that had fired on him from their hidden positions down in the courtyard. One went down with a smoking hole in his helmet as the other bolts whistled past to sear the stone walls.

Obi-Wan was beside him, so close in the Force it was like falling into a star, fighting next to him step after step down into the courtyard and out toward the men who were alternating shots at them with harsh, panicked shouts at each other.

The troops were afraid, their shots beginning to fly wild, and Anakin felt a beautiful, murderous rage swell within him. He had no fear, no hesitation. They were going to die.

All of them.

And he knew, through that strange, magnified bond with Obi-Wan that Obi-Wan wanted that too.

There was no time to think of why. It was just and right and that was all the reason he needed.

Especially Appo, he realized. Commander Appo was going to die.

That thought felt particularly satisfying.

Anakin grinned as the Force echoed in his head, amplifying the distinct click of a grenade being activated off to his right, and waited for the man to toss it as Anakin dove and rolled up into another deadly slash through a trooper clumsily trying to flee him.

When the grenade came sailing over the low, worn wall he swung his arm over his head and pushed it with the Force to land behind the wall on his left, next to another man shooting at him. A hollow boom thumped through the ground beneath his feet and there was no more fire from that direction as he continued forward.

He and Obi-Wan cut their way to the first lines of columns in the courtyard, advancing and retreating in a beautiful, deadly harmony neither could fully follow on a conscious level, until only half a dozen men or so were left from the shouting and blaster fire peppering them from different points.

 _Ahsoka!_ Obi-Wan hissed across their bond, the heat burning through his muscles and the adrenaline racing through his blood pounding in Anakin’s soul the same as his own. Anakin broke into a run, darting into the rows of stone and slashing bolts away in a blind wrath.

Appo and another man were running, Appo shouting into his helmet comm about back-up and extraction as the other clone carried the unconscious Ahsoka on his back.

Their boots pounded along the dirt and meandering patches of grass, strangely audible to Anakin even over the loud whine of shots now aiming for his back as he passed the last handful of men Appo had left behind in his blind run back toward the hills that had brought them here.

He gave himself to the Force, sank deep into its tides, and without taking his eyes off of Ahsoka let instinct guide his blade behind him in the swing of a figure-eight, deflecting the few shots aimed well enough to hit him. A moment later the fire ceased entirely, screams rising up thin and pitiful in the dry afternoon air as he felt Obi-Wan mercilessly hack his way through the knot of troopers with a cold, bitter satisfaction seeping across their bond. _Dead. All dead_ , came Obi-Wan’s call in an unconscious, ghoulish echo of Sen.

 _Two left_ , Anakin answered with a fiery certainty that this would not be true for much longer. “Drop her!” he shouted, knowing that without the armor that weighed them down he would be on them in another minute at most.

The commander seemed to realize this at the same time and spat something in Mandalorian to the man next to him. They ground to a halt in the middle of one of the rows of columns, the man sliding Ahsoka off to sprawl bonelessly in the dirt as Appo drew his blaster pistol to point directly at Ahsoka’s lolling head, her face streaked with dust.

Anakin slowed and stopped with a wordless growl, saber dropping to his side.

“You remember her, huh?” Appo grunted through his helmet as the other clone stood back up, pointing his rifle around nervously in a search for Obi-Wan. “How much else do you remember, _Koh_?”

“That’s not my name,” he hissed, not daring to reach out to Obi-Wan for anything more than a wordless plea for help as he tried to focus on the way the sun glared off the shaft of the blaster and the furious desperation in Appo’s voice. There would only be one chance for them to save her, he knew, and if he misjudged it Ahsoka would die, as surely as the soldiers lying motionless on the temple steps with black lines of char across their white armor.

“Do you remember all those people you killed? All those Jedi? How about them?”

Anakin’s blood ran cold at what almost came out of his mouth in response. _Those were targets._

Until now there had been no time for Anakin to think about Koh, the warped shadow of himself that hung over his every thought and action as he had fought his way out of the temple. There had been only a vicious pleasure at fighting and a distorted, unnaturally clear bond with Obi-Wan he could barely process on a conscious level.

He knew at that moment Obi-Wan was coming around on their left side, slipping noiselessly from column to column when the lookout turned to check in the other direction. But he was too far away to make it before the tension thick in the air broke into violence, Anakin was sure. His hand shook under the pressure of trying to keep Koh from coming back, to resist the sudden urge to power down his saber and wait for the comforting, familiar words dismissing him back to a gunship.

 _Please_ , he prayed to the Force. _Let me save her. I have to save her_.

“Between the two of you, you’ve killed over fifty of your own, Jedi,” Appo pressed, cocking his head to the side and grip steady as he kept the pistol aimed at Ahsoka’s head. “We kept a tally in the command center. Knights, padawans. Men, women. With that lightsaber you’re holding right now.”

 _Ahsoka is alive and I will keep her alive_ , Anakin swore, clenching his jaw as he kept his attention only on her, on the warm sun on his shoulders and the nervous way the other clone kept turning in place. There was a yawning black abyss waiting on the other side of Appo’s words, and he felt it reaching out for him even as he fought to stay in the moment and let the horrible things the commander was saying drift past without touching him.

 _There was a padawan. In a dark hallway. He couldn’t get the lift to come in time to get away from me._ The memory surfaced more fully, raw and brutal: a skinny little padawan cast in the red light of Koh’s saber, trapped and trembling and crying so hard he was almost incoherent as he begged for his life.

_I stabbed him through the heart without hesitating._

_I was pleased. I had eliminated another target._

Tears began to well in Anakin’s eyes, blurring his vision as he sensed Appo tensing, the fine dance of the commander’s muscles shifting all the way up his arm.

 _Anakin!_ Obi-Wan shouted through their bond, sensing the despair clawing away at him, still too far away to help. _Focus! We can’t let them take her--_

The unspoken end of his sentence, too awful to express, hung black and horrible between them. _And make her like us._

 _No. NO!_ Rage swept through Anakin, hot and blinding, and everything happened at once.

Appo whipped his blaster up to point at Anakin’s chest as the other clone suddenly took aim at Anakin’s leg.

But in a violent wave of the Force their shots went wild, one kicking up a puff of dust next to Anakin’s boot as the other sailed harmlessly into the sky, both men stumbling back with choking, wheezing gasps as Anakin took one step after another toward them.

His hand was out in front of him, fingers twisting as he wrapped the Force around the soft flesh of their throats, well-hidden underneath their armor but useless against his fury. He tossed the lookout aside with a snarl, snapping the delicate bones of his neck in a swift wave, as Appo gasped for air and brought his pistol up again just in time for Anakin to slash his arm off above the elbow.

It flew and landed with a clumsy, meaty thud a few feet away, the pistol skittering away in a line of dust.

The commander fell to his knees as Anakin came to a stop in front of him, groaning in breathless agony as he scrabbled against the ground with his remaining hand in an attempt to get back up. His fingers brushed Ahsoka’s shoulder and Anakin kicked him onto his back in return, stepping up to leave his foot in the middle of Appo’s chest.

Anakin leaned down over him and turned his saber off, hooking it back on his belt before reaching to yank the commander’s helmet off.

The low hiss of tense voices filled the air, brisk chatter confirming the deployment of reinforcements to the planet surface.

Anakin tossed the helmet aside to bounce and roll along the ground, seeing only Appo’s anguished face as he writhed about under his boot. “How long until they arrive?” he hissed, letting the Force relax just enough around the fragile length of Appo’s throat he would be able to speak.

“Doesn’t matter,” the commander spat back, hatred giving him a burst of strength. “You two have… trackers… best in the galaxy. Right against your brainstems.” He laughed up at Anakin, delirious with pain, the sound hard and bitter over the muttering ghosts still talking in bloodless lingo through his helmet lying nearby. “Go on. Run. Fly. They’ll find you.”

Appo was alive and then he wasn’t, his throat crunching in on itself so quickly he only had time to blink up at Anakin in surprise before death dropped his head back to make a lazy turn along the ground.

Pulling his fist back against his stomach, the clone no longer dangerous and therefore no longer important, Anakin turned slowly as if in a dream and sank down next to Ahsoka in a creak of leather. Her thoughts swirled in a haze up to him, muffled by darkness as she lay unaware of the world around her: _Ship. In the cave. I have to make it to the ship._

“Snips,” he whispered down to her, reaching out with the same hand that had just murdered a dozen men to trace a shaking line along her unconscious face.

She was here. His padawan.

But she was grown now, so tall, her features sharper. _How long were we… gone? How long were we like this?_ he wondered in horror, staring down at the crisp black of his combat suit as Obi-Wan’s footsteps echoed through the columns.

“Anakin,” he called, his own voice raw with the same torment in Anakin’s thoughts as he approached and dropped down next to him. Their minds were still woven together so tightly it was hard for Anakin to truly separate out his own thoughts, so there was no need for Obi-Wan to ask if she was alive.

And there was no need to discuss what they had to do. 

_We have to save her._

 

* * *

 

Ahsoka woke with a start, aware first of the smooth synthleather of armrests under her hands and a belt across her lap, blinking at the bright light drifting in from outside, a view looking out from a large cave over scrub-dotted hills. She was on a ship. _In a pilot chair. The little ship Rex flew here for me._

The engines were spinning up, the craft rumbling beneath her, and she watched the lights on the control board flicker green and blue as the ship ran itself through the automated pre-flight routine. The lights were dimmed, the board showing the craft was in an emergency setting to direct additional power to the engines from nonessential systems.

_How did I get--_

“Ahsoka.”

She twisted around in mute disbelief to find Anakin standing behind her, far enough back in the shadows his strange eyes glowed a faint gold. “I am so sorry. About everything.” Obi-Wan stood next to him, a second figure lost in gloom, wearing the same sorrowful expression Anakin was.

There was such gentle sadness in Anakin’s voice the brief pang of fear that ran through her vanished in happy shock. This was not the monster that had been sent to capture her.

This was Skyguy.

He remembered. They both remembered.

And through some miracle they had escaped the Imperial troops sent along with them.

Fumbling with the harness belt, she snapped it off in a clatter of the buckle against the seat and ran to hug the both of them, throwing her arms around them. “Masters!” she cried, burying her face against their shoulders and pulling them both in close. _You’re back! You’re back!_

Both of them hugged her, if a little awkwardly, Obi-Wan’s hand resting on her back and Anakin’s metal one heavy on her shoulder.

“You escaped!” she beamed, pressed in so close she could smell the distinctive scent of ozone on their clothes. _They must have fought their way out._

 _It doesn’t matter. After all this time they’re here. They’re here and they remember and we’re together._ “You escaped,” she repeated in muffled amazement, fighting back tears. “Let’s get out of here, ok? You two sit down and get strapped in and I’ll fly us out.”

“No, Ahsoka,” Master Obi-Wan reluctantly sighed, the lilt of his Coruscanti accent hushed as his warm hand stroked her back.  

Anakin’s fingers curled around her arm, pulling her back, and he spoke with a quiet tenderness that reminded her of the first day they had met. “Ahsoka… we’re not going with you.”

She blinked up at him, not understanding. Their strange, unnatural eyes, she could understand. The awful sabers at their sides, pulsing with dark side energy, even those she could understand. It would take time, such a long time, to bring them all the way back from the unspeakable nightmare they had lived through.

But she couldn’t understand what Skyguy had just said. It made no sense. “What are you talking about?” she asked, looking in desperation between the two of them. Their shields were impossible to feel anything through, piled so high there was no hint of what they were thinking.

Anakin took her hand in his, looking hard into her eyes. “We can’t go with you, Snips.”

“Whatever you did while, while you were them... it wasn’t you!” she protested, unable to believe what was happening and kneading his hand with her own in frantic worry. “It wasn’t! Please, you have to come with me!”

“They put trackers in us, Ahsoka. Since the beginning, they’ve always been able to find us. They always will. And they would find you,” Anakin said, voice faltering before he managed to continue. “And we can’t let that happen. Not to you.”

“We’ll get them out!” She darted looks at both of them, terrified at how their expressions didn’t change. “Right now! Where are they? Do you know?”

“You have to get out of here, Ahsoka, while you still can,” Obi-Wan said, voice gentle but firm. He looked away out the window as if to make his point, but she caught the pain that glittered harsh and bright in his gaze as he did. “There isn’t much time left. They’ve sent reinforcements and we don’t know how much time is left before they arrive.”

“I am not leaving you,” she declared angrily, pointing a finger at them. “Not now. Not ever.”

“You have to!” Anakin demanded in a flash of anger, his and Obi-Wan’s shared anguish a halo flaring around him before he forced it back down.

Ahsoka felt her breath catch in her throat at the storm of their emotions: rage and guilt, crushing and vast, the perfect and horrible knowledge of every life they had taken. And alongside that the primal, awful fear of a metal parasite, a tracker nestled deep within them that would never let them rest.

And, somehow, glimmering between the two men, a boundless love for her that had survived the horrors of their degradations. A need for her to live.

“Please, Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan whispered in apology, her pain singing to them of what she had seen. “You have to go. It’s too late for us. It has been for a long while.”

“No! I don’t, I don’t want to leave you,” she stammered, voice trembling as it dawned on her how hopeless the situation was. “I can’t leave you, Masters. I can’t.”

She didn’t remember what happened next, only that Anakin swallowed and glanced away as Obi-Wan looked down at the floor, the subtle movement of their hands twining together catching her eye. “Forgive us,” one of them murmured, though the words were so fragile, so quiet she would never be sure who said it. “Forgive us, padawan.”

And then the crisp voice of the ship’s navi system rang out, signaling the little vessel was about to go into hyperdrive. Another bell chimed steadily alongside the hyperdrive warning, a proximity alarm for an approaching ship.

“Five seconds to hyperdrive activation,” the ship announced.

Ahsoka jumped and looked around in bewilderment: the rolling yellows and greens of Varen IV were far below her and her fingers lay comfortably on the controls, firm and steady on the steering and hyperdrive array. An Imperial vessel lay in the distance, the glint of sunlight flickering on bits of metal drifting toward her suggesting it had already deployed fighters after her.

“Four.”

She was alone in the cabin.

_No._

Her masters had mind-tricked her into leaving, and with the massive ship honing in on her, Ahsoka knew immediately that even if she canceled the jump to hyperspace there was no time or way to get back to them before the Imperials did.

_Masters, no! NO!_

“Three.”

She remembered Anakin sitting on the wing of her fighter in the Temple hangar bay, long legs hanging off it, calm and relaxed as he walked her through replacing broken arrays.

“Two.”

She remembered Obi-Wan meditating next to her after a battle, calm and reassuring without ever speaking, grounding her when she needed it most.

“One.”

Something sat heavy in her pocket, and she reached down in disbelief to pull out the colorful string of her padawan beads.

An anguished howl broke free at the weight of them in her hand. _I will never see them again_.

_Never._

“Initiating jump.”

She burst into sobs as hyperspace crashed over her in a rush of blue and white waves, clutching the beads and screaming until she went hoarse in the empty little cabin where her masters had stood just a little while before.

 

* * *

 

Lost in the shadow of the cave mouth, Anakin and Obi-Wan watched the little ship arc upward into the sky until it vanished into the faded blue and the echoed rumble of its engines was lost across the dry scatter of the hills around them.

She was safe.

And she would be safe because they had not gone with her.

Anakin took Obi-Wan’s hand and squeezed it, both of them still looking up at the point where Ahsoka’s ship had disappeared as memories and fears began to rush in, no longer held back by the desperate need to stay focused on getting her out of there.

The white rooms. Frightened faces behind blasters, behind green and blue lightsabers, behind their mothers and fathers. Never fast enough, never strong enough to stop him.

_Dead. All dead._

“I killed so many,” Anakin whimpered in a horrified confession up to the sky.

His palm shook against Obi-Wan’s and Obi-Wan pulled him into a fierce, tight hug, a hoarse wail going up from Anakin as he did.

“We killed so many.” Obi-Wan gasped into Anakin’s shoulder, fingers digging into the muscles of his back, a merciless parade of ghastly images washing over him in a mirror of Anakin’s.

_What have I done? What have I done?_

A distant memory rose inside Obi-Wan’s mind, a powerful return to the past: it was a cool spring morning at the Temple, long ago, and he was a young boy standing near the entrance, watching the tall, elegant silhouettes of knights sweeping past on their way out to a mission somewhere. _I will be like them one day_ , his younger self vowed with a solemnness past his years. _I will be a knight too one day. And I will help people._

Obi-Wan let out a choked sob, tears wetting Anakin’s chest, and Anakin held him closer, panic creeping in.

“They’ll take us back and make us go after her, won’t they? They’ll make us _them_ again, won’t they?”

Obi-Wan tried to open his mouth, to promise Anakin that wouldn’t be their future, but it was useless. They had both heard the last burst of chatter through Appo’s helmet, before Anakin had killed him and the ship in orbit had cut off the transmission. _Six waves, all cold_ : six squads on the way, stun bolts only.

The awful phantoms of Sen and Koh, tortured into obedience, hollow and empty and wrong, loomed over them both. _We killed so many people. So many innocents._

“I can’t go back, I can’t go back,” Anakin pleaded, pulling away from Obi-Wan and fixing him with wild eyes. _Do you understand?_ the look begged without words, the idea lurking behind it too monstrous to say or think about in any kind of detail.

For a long moment, Obi-Wan met his gaze with his own tormented one, but for all of the self-loathing and fear roiling through him his voice, in a small miracle, came out steady, just as Anakin needed it to be. “We won’t.” He lifted his hands to rest on Anakin’s face, holding it as gently as he did the old books he had loved to read back in the Temple library, another lifetime ago. “They won’t take us.”

Anakin cried in frightened relief, Obi-Wan wiping his tears away with his thumb, fighting back his own as best he could.  “We don’t have much time,” Obi-Wan whispered, letting his hands slide down Anakin’s face to his chest and arms before they fell away. There was a faint noise, so weak they might have been imagining it, but years of war gave them the terrible knowledge of exactly what it was: gunships on an approach vector, likely still too high in the atmosphere to see but on their way.

Obi-Wan started to step backward into the cave but Anakin shook his head and pulled him softly out into the rocky clearing that sprawled out behind them. “So the stars will be over us tonight. You,” he explained, taking a trembling breath, “you can’t go on if the stars can’t see you to guide you.”

Smiling through his own tears to show he understood, Obi-Wan let Anakin guide him out into the middle of the meager wash of grass and dirt in front of the cave, worn boulders and blue sky stretching out around them. Their new, powerful reflection of each other’s souls had let Anakin’s words become a whole scene, an entire memory for Obi-Wan just as much as if he had lived it himself: a little boy sad over the death of a friend, the friend’s family carrying his tiny, red-wrapped body into the dunes as twin suns burned their way down to the horizon. The same family carrying his body back the next day in a happy parade of songs and shouts, joyfully declaring he was free, that his soul had gone in the night, guided by the spirits of those who had passed before.

 _Free_ , they thought as one in the haven of their bond, the word heavy with the same pain and hope that had shone in the family’s eyes.

Obi-Wan walked alongside Anakin, aware on a deep, wordless level of the warmth of Anakin’s palm against his, of every pebble that crunched under their boots and the dazzling glitter of the sun overhead. When they stopped, Anakin turned to him and took him by the shoulders, and all Obi-Wan could think of was how beautiful he looked at that moment. The line of his eyelashes, the shadow cast along his throat, the wet trail of tears gleaming down his face.

Anakin found one last, fragile smile as Obi-Wan’s love burned bright in their bond, his own shining back as he touched Obi-Wan’s cheek and leaned in to kiss him.

It was a chaste, gentle touch of his lips to Obi-Wan’s, one of reverence and apology as they knelt to face each other in the pale dirt. In the background the thrum of engines had become a distant beat, the gunships now black dots in the expanse of blue overhead.

They unholstered their sabers, looking into each other’s eyes and emotions swirling madly between them, defying all expression when familiar, beloved words came to them like dawn after a long, bitter night. "There is no emotion. There is peace,” they recited together.

Memories flickered between them, so different from the growing thunder on the horizon: a silent dawn on Tatooine, dunes awash with delicate yellow flowers sprung up after a rare thunderstorm. The peace of a still night, lying in bed with the glittering river of Coruscanti air traffic passing by outside.

They sat up, winding their free arms around each other, nestling their sabers like infants between their chests, Obi-Wan’s lying pressed against Anakin’s heart, Anakin’s lying against his.

“There is no ignorance. There is knowledge,” Obi-Wan murmured.

“There is no passion. There is serenity,” Anakin answered, leaning forward to touch his forehead to Obi-Wan’s. Their sabers dug into each other’s chests when he did, metal hard and unforgiving, but he could only smile and give a shaky grin at the sudden memory Obi-Wan recalled, the two of them fumbling about with hushed laughter in the tiny, private shower stall in Anakin’s old quarters on the _Resolute_.

“There is no chaos. There is harmony,” they continued, hearts pounding and throats dry.

As they spoke, the bond between them sang of love, one bright and pure enough to push back all of the shadows in their hearts for one perfect, tranquil moment as their souls twined together for one last time.

“There is no death. There is the Force.”

Obi-Wan and Anakin closed their eyes, spirits sinking down into the other as a sudden wind rolled through the hills and kicked up a cloud of dust to scatter like fine ash through the air, concealing them from everything but each other.

_I love you. I love you Iloveyouiloveyouilove--_

A flash of red bloomed in the fog, there and gone in a flicker of crimson.

When the first soldiers arrived moments later, rappelling down into the settling dust from the grinding roar of their ship overhead, they found only two piles of black clothing, the saber hilts atop them still warm to the touch.

 

* * *

_**Epilogue** _

* * *

 

_The early years of the Rebellion are difficult to piece together, given the lack of organization at the time, but among the heroes of that time are a clone soldier named Rex and the Togruta Jedi named Ahsoka Tano who fought with him._

_Tano, as historians specializing in the Jedi well know, went on to become the first Grandmaster of the New Order and made it her life’s work to rescue the Jedi from extinction once the Empire was defeated._

_She supervised the reconstruction of not only the Order but of Jedi temples across the galaxy, finally choosing for her own home a small ancillary temple on the moon of Varen IV._  

_One notable feature of this temple, which would eventually become Tano’s final resting place, is the simple stone monument she had built nearby. Tano is said to have visited it every day, even when her advanced age required the help of healers to make the journey._

_It lies a short walk from the temple, a simple block of native granite carved with the words “For those lost to the Empire but never forgotten.”_

_To this day, visitors to the monument often report experiencing a profound sense of peace while there._

_\-- Curiosities and Antiquities of the Outer Rim, Third Edition_


End file.
